HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-12-11 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL
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Special Meeting
December 11, 2017
The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council
Chambers at 5:07 P.M.
Present: DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach
Absent: Fine
Closed Session
17. CONFERENCE WITH CITY ATTORNEY - EXISTING LITIGATION Subject: James Judge Luckey v. City of Palo Alto
Santa Clara County Superior Court Case No. 16CV303728
Authority: Government Code Section 54956.9(d) (1)
Mayor Scharff: We're going into Closed Session, conference with City
Attorney regarding existing litigation. I need a Motion to go into Closed Session.
Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved.
Council Member Wolbach: Second.
MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach
to go into Closed Session.
Mayor Scharff: Second. All in favor? That passes unanimously.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent
Council went into Closed Session at 5:07 P.M.
Council returned from Closed Session at 6:34 P.M.
Mayor Scharff: We're returning from Closed Session, and there's no
reportable action.
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Special Orders of the Day
1. Resolution 9729 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo
Alto Expressing Appreciation to Dave Dockter for Outstanding Public
Service Upon his Retirement.”
Mayor Scharff: Our first is a Special Order of the Day, adoption of a
Resolution expressing appreciation to Dave Dockter for outstanding public
service upon his retirement.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Hello, everyone. It's a great pleasure to read this
Resolution for Dave Dockter, whom I've known for a very long period of
time. He certainly has made an enormous difference in our canopy in the
City of Palo Alto, of the tall tree. This is expressing appreciation for
outstanding public service to Dave Dockter upon his retirement. She read
the Resolution into the record. Could we applaud Dave? The Mayor is going
to—not yet?
Mayor Scharff: I'll take over. First of all, normally we just go down and
present it to you, but we can't present it to you yet because we have to
vote. It could be a close vote. That's what we do. If we could just vote on
the board. Sorry, I made a mistake. Vice Mayor Kniss would like to move
the Resolution. I will second it. Now we vote on the board. You know
what? It was unanimous. Now, I have the honor to come down and present
it to you.
MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to adopt a
Resolution of appreciation to Dave Dockter for outstanding public service
upon his retirement.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent
Dave Dockter: Leave it to the City Manager to say, "Go ahead anyway."
Thank you all. Vice Mayor Kniss, Mayor Scharff, and Council, it's been a
privilege to be here for 21 years. This is the exclamation mark on what
community means, to have all of you stand and recognize what your values
mean, how we've been implementing them, at least for 21 years. After I'm
gone, there's a whole crowd that will still keep implementing those values.
To Council here, you guys keeps shepherding and listening to the voices, the
community values. You are the only echo chamber here, and City Manager knows that. It's been a privilege for me as a student of arbor culture, who
has turned into a land use warrior at times. I really appreciate this
community a lot. I tout this community to other communities all over the
Nation. This is the best place I could have ever landed to work in. Thank
you.
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James Keene, City Manager: Mr. Mayor, with the privilege of the Council, I
would just like to add one of the things that wasn't fully expressed in the
Resolution is beyond Dave's technical expertise. He really is an exemplary
City employee in the sense of being the anti-bureaucrat. Any kind of issue
or problem that might come forward, he was always willing to take it on, try
to look for creative solutions. He was the kind of person who would never
say, "That's not my job." You've always had the community's best interests.
We on the Staff are going to miss you. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: We do have one public speaker. Before that, I also wanted
to say we are going to miss you, Dave. Thank you very much. You're a
legend in the community. Everyone talks about it with the trees and what a
great job you do. It's a real loss to the City. I hope you enjoy retirement.
Thanks again for all your service. Council Member Holman must want to
speak. It says Fine up here.
Council Member Holman: Just briefly, and it plays off what the City Manager
said. You have so much expertise. We all appreciate that, respect it, and
rely on it. What really makes you such an exemplary employee is, playing
off what Jim said, that you are committed to this community. The public
really has come to rely on you and trust you with your expertise and how it's
applied in specific situations and how you evaluate the different situations on
their own merit. You'll be greatly missed. I'm sure you have passed on
your knowledge and mentored others in the department. Thank you so
much for all your years of service. Greatly appreciate it.
Mayor Scharff: Martin Bernstein wants to speak. Martin, if you want to
come up and say a few words. You'll have 3 minutes.
Martin Bernstein: I just wanted to commend in public David for your great
education. I learned a lot about the trees and the value of trees. You're a
great educator. Thank you so much.
2. Acceptance of Santa Clara County Healthy Cities Initiative Awards.
Mayor Scharff: Now, we have Palo Alto's acceptance of the Santa Clara
County Healthy Cities Initiative Awards. Dr. Cody.
Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County Health Director: Good evening, Mayor
Scharff and Vice Mayor Kniss and members of the Council. My name is Dr. Sara Cody. I'm the Santa Clara County Health Officer and Public Health
Director. It's a pleasure to be here this evening. I am here to recognize the
City Council and Staff with two awards. One of them is so large and heavy I
might need assistance presenting it to you. The Healthy Cities Initiative
facilitates and celebrates leadership efforts of cities to improve community
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health and prevent chronic diseases like obesity and type II diabetes. While
we are your Health Department and I am your Health Officer, we can't
prevent chronic diseases and improve health of residents and wellbeing of
residents and cities without the hard work of you all. Our partnership with
cities is absolutely critical. First, I'm pleased to present the City of Palo Alto
with an Exemplary Award for reduced exposure to secondhand smoke. That
is this one. This award is for taking significant steps to protect residents,
visitors, and workers from the harmful impacts of secondhand smoke
through adoption of a comprehensive smoke-free housing policy and
expansion of existing secondhand smoke protections to include outdoor
public spaces. Palo Alto's innovative thinking led to a collaborative
partnership between the County and the City on a Tobacco Retail Permit
Ordinance aimed at curbing the impacts of tobacco marketing and access on
Palo Alto youth. Second, I'm delighted to present the City of Palo Alto with the Best Overall Award. This is a big deal. The City of Palo Alto is being
recognized with this award for achieving the most and some of the best
Healthy City strategies of all the cities and towns within the County of Santa
Clara to date. That's this one that I need help to lift. In addition to the
tobacco prevention work, some key achievements by the City of Palo Alto
include Palo Alto's Safe Route to School program, a partnership between the
City of Palo Alto and Palo Alto Unified School District and the Palo Alto Parent
Teacher Association (PTA), which has achieved great success in getting more
students walking and biking to school. I just want to note that the Palo Alto
Safe Routes to School program has been so successful that it now serves as
a model for communities not just across the County but indeed across the
Country. Recently, the City of Palo Alto has made strides to create healthier
food and beverage environments in City facilities by installing water bottle
filling stations, like the one I just made use of right outside the Chambers,
and ensuring healthier snacks and drinks are offered at meetings, events, in
cafes, and vending machines. This year is where the City of Palo Alto was
recognized as an Age Friendly City by the World Health Organization, a
distinction awarded to those jurisdictions that involve older adults in
decision-making and encourage older adults to retain autonomy and remain in the community by aging in place. In order to accomplish all this great
work, the County has had the pleasure to work with many Palo Alto Staff
including Rosie Mesterhazy and Sylvia Star-Lack, Palo Alto's Safe Route to
School Coordinators, Phil Bobel and Julia Weiss in the Public Works
Department, and Staff in the City Manager and City Attorney's Office who have been tremendous partners on the tobacco prevention policy work and
helped with the overall Healthy Cities effort. Congratulations again for your
achievements and your efforts to promote the public health of all employees
and residents and visitors in the City of Palo Alto. I look forward to this
continued partnership. It's a delight to be here, and we encourage you with
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this great work. We look forward to seeing what you'll do next. Thank you
so much.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. I'll come down and accept the
award. I also wanted say that I'm very pleased by this and very proud of
our City and really appreciate the recognition. As you may know, a couple
of years ago we made Healthy Cities one of our Priorities in Palo Alto. In our
true Palo Alto tradition, we actually then went out and achieved it. It's a
huge honor to be named the healthiest city in Santa Clara County. I'm very
pleased by this. I really appreciate Dr. Cody highlighting many of the
elements of the healthiest city in the county. By making it a Priority, we
wanted to create social, cultural, and physical environments that promote
and support the health, wellbeing, and creative expression of our
community. I think we've done that. There are many examples as we go
around our beautiful City from the hundreds of kids riding their bikes to school, which you mentioned, to our tree canopy to our parks to our open
spaces to our Art Center, cultural activities, and to our commitment to
recycling and sustainability. It's good to take a moment to reflect. This
year I've had the honor of being president of the Cities Association of Santa
Clara County, and it's actually a really interesting feeling. People will say we
won this award and we got the bronze award for this. We do it at the end of
a meeting, cheers, and good things that occurred in your City. I always feel
funny saying we got the platinum award this year. It goes like that every
time. I know there are other cities in the County that you are giving Healthy
City awards. At the next Cities Association meeting, it'll go like this, "We got
this award." "Yeah, but we got the best overall Healthy Cities." That's just
the way we are in Palo Alto. It's actually very gratifying to be a Council
Member and to be Mayor in this City and all of that because we do great
work. The Council obviously plays a role in that, but it's our Staff. We made
the Healthy Cities a Priority, and our Staff went out there and did the hard
work to make this happen. I actually was hoping we could give a round of
applause for our Staff on this. I know Vice Mayor Kniss wanted to say a few
words.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Actually, Dr. Cody, who is also Sara, I wanted to tell people that you're actually the homegrown product. Sara was brought up in
Palo Alto, still lives in Palo Alto, and serves Palo Alto. We are the
northernmost City in our County, as you know. We've known each other a
long time. Sara was at the County when I was at the County before. You
were in your current position. We have always really enjoyed working together. Seeing this is absolutely terrific because these are all the things
we worked for at the County, especially as we were emphasizing public
health. I only see one thing on this that troubles me. I know that we've
discussed this before. This certainly would be Supervisor Yeager's interest.
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Under reduced exposure to sugary drinks, we as a Council should attack that
more fully. They have done that in Berkeley. They've done it in a variety of
places. It's one of the areas that I'm most concerned about because the
sugar drinks not only spike the blood sugar level but also quite frankly—I
think we have a dentist here tonight—they're really terrible for your teeth. I
know you can't force us to do that. This is one of the areas where I'd
certainly like to see us do more. I would also—Karen, maybe you're going to
speak—acknowledge that Council Member Holman pushed Health Cities, I
think, before I came back on this governing body. I'm really proud for what
we've done with the Healthy Cities. We've also done it for adults. We're
even becoming a dementia friendly city. We're taking health from A to Z.
I'm so glad to see you here tonight. Thanks for coming.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: I'll be brief because a lot has been said. I support and appreciate those comments. Thank you for the award, very much
appreciated. While we have had Healthy City Healthy Community as a
Priority for 3 years, just to be clear—because our pattern is to keep them as
a Priority for 3 years—it doesn't mean the work will stop. Just as one
example of that—Vice Mayor Kniss was one of the Colleagues who signed
onto this. We do have an Anti-idling Ordinance coming up that will probably
be enacted next year. Other work that we look forward to improving our
community on in the years to come too. Thank you very much.
Ms. Cody: Thank you. Thank you for your comments. We'd be delighted to
work with you on sugary beverage policies.
Mayor Scharff: Before you leave, Council Member Wolbach wants to speak
to.
Council Member Wolbach: First, I just wanted to say actually the Anti-Idling
Ordinance will be coming to Policy and Services Committee meeting
tomorrow night at 6:00 P.M. for anyone who wants to come down to City
Hall again tomorrow. I just wanted to thank actually Council Members
Holman and Kniss in particular. A couple of years ago, when I had just
joined Council and we were at our Retreat talking about our Priorities for the
year, they lobbied me and said, "A lot of things you care about tie in with Healthy Cities, Healthy Community. Will you help us put it on our Priorities
for the year?" They talked me into it. My expectations have been exceeded.
The partnership between the City and the County, the work by the Staff,
Council Members, and residents has really been tremendous. This, of
course, does not mean we're as healthy as we want to be. This does not mean that we have achieved some goal, as was suggested. Achieving this
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does not mean that we can look at this merely in the rearview mirror. Even
if it's not one of our Priorities next year, a lot of the work that we're going to
continue to work on with relation to housing and transportation and safety
and our environment, and something else on our Agenda tonight, our
Sustainability Plan. A lot of these things will continue to contribute to the
health of our community. This really does establish that we are heading in
the right direction, which is something to be proud of. Thank you for all of
your help at the County.
Ms. Cody: Thank you. Thank you for your comments because I do think all
of the work you do does support public health. It's much broader than what
you've been recognized for with this award. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much.
2A. Proclamation Honoring Annette Glanckopf for Outstanding Public
Service.
Mayor Scharff: Now, I have the great honor of issuing a Proclamation to
honor Annette Glanckopf. I want to say that as Mayor you get to issue these
Proclamations. Of all the Proclamations I've issued, this is the one I'm most
happy about. I have known Annette for a long time now. I find her to be
one of the starring lights of our community. I also want to tell you that I
asked Annette if I could issue her a Proclamation, and she said absolutely
not. I then had to beg, get on my knees, please, please. She said no. She
said no to me for months. Finally, finally she gave in, and it has made me
incredibly happy. Annette, you make so many people happy in Palo Alto,
and you give so much of yourself. You definitely deserve this. With that, I
am going to read your Proclamation. He read the Proclamation into the
record. Thank you very much, Annette. Before you speak, I'm going to give
it to you, and then I'll let you speak.
Annette Glanckopf: I did want to say a few words. I'm really humbled by
your amazing words and these wonderful vests in the audience. I really
appreciate that. Before I make a few comments, I also wanted to give my
heart-felt congratulations to Dave Dockter, who really has been an amazing
asset to the City. We'll all be very sorry to see him go. Again, I really
wanted to thank everyone on the Council and especially Mayor Scharff for his extra effort in making this happen and for Sheri Furman for getting the
ball rolling. We all know it takes a village. Dave mentioned it really takes a
community. I have been really blessed to have worked with many, many
splendid, dedicated people in maintaining and improving the quality of life in
our fair City, especially from the neighborhoods. We have a few neighborhood leaders here, who I'm very proud of, Leadership Palo Alto
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which you mentioned, and our wonderful emergency service volunteers who
come in multiple flavors, so we also have a few block preparedness
coordinators, neighborhood coordinators, and community emergency
medical response teams as well. Their work is really represented in this
Proclamation. I really wanted to acknowledge them. It's just not me; it's
really all of this community in Palo Alto. As you know, one of my key areas
of focus is emergency preparedness. To that end, I wanted to be the first to
formally invite the Council and the public to our 2018 kickoff. Beth, if you
haven't distributed my flyer, I want to invite the Council and the public to
this grand event, which will be held right here in Council Chambers on
January 18th with an early reception. The meeting starts at 7:00 P.M.
Emergency Services Director Ken Dueker and I are co-chairing the event.
Who's coming? City Manager Jim Keene has accepted. Vice Mayor Kniss is
going to graciously present opening remarks. Our almost brand new Police Chief Robert Jonsen and Fire Chief Nickel will make closing remarks. The
topic, with North Korea saying war is imminent, the horrific devastating fires
in the wine country and Southern California, and potentially the seasonal
flooding, we have selected the topic of Calamities Happen: What You Need
to Know. As a further note on this topic, my own personal priority for next
year is to persuade you, the Council, and you, the City, to fund and
implement a comprehensive early warning system including the use of
sirens. Emergency sirens have been an interest of mine and at least one
Council Member for a few years. We'll talk more about that in 2018. Again,
I'm just humbled by the appreciation and the award and all the people
attending tonight. I just want to end by saying thank you from the very
bottom of my heart.
Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I think it would be good if you came back to the mic,
Annette. I know some other people want to speak about you as well.
Exemplary does begin to hit the target, but you've made an amazing
contribution to Palo Alto, sometimes through difficult times. I know that
you've continued when it was probably difficult to do so. We are more than
grateful. You've made a difference in all of those areas that were mentioned tonight but certainly in emergency preparedness. As we see all the orange
jackets that are out here tonight, I know they're here to honor you. I know
they're privilege. Thanks for what you've done. You know what? You get to
keep on doing it.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: I'm a little embarrassed at speaking to three
things in a row, but I've known Annette for so many years it would be—it's
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just not possible not to say something. It is in many ways our volunteers,
our community volunteers, that define what Palo Alto is and make it so very,
very special in many, many ways. You stand out among those volunteers,
and that's why you're getting this Proclamation this evening. Thank you,
thank you, and thank you. As Vice Mayor said, you get to keep doing it.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: I think you've been an institution in Palo Alto, and
I mean that in the best possible sense of the word. You've done a lot of
things both large and small. We mentioned a lot of the large ones, helping
to found and run Palo Alto Neighborhood (PAN), the Midtown Residents
Association which is one of the better neighborhood associations, emergency
prep, Rotary. I'm sure you've done a lot of small things for the community
that nobody knows about. I just wanted to say thank you for everything
you've done. It's the perfect time of year to do this. Thank you for everything you've done and everything you will do in the future.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: What they said. I'll take it one step further and
say thanks for being a really great example. A lot of people look to you as a
real role model on a lot of levels on the things that were in the Resolution,
on the things that fly below the radar, and for just being a very good friend
to so many people in Palo Alto who have really appreciated it. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou.
Council Member Kou: To my partner, I just want to thank you for all the
guidance that you gave me through the emergency preparedness years that
we worked together. I've seen your tireless and your "never give up"
attitude. That's something I've learned from you. I just want to say thank
you for all the service that you've provided to the City in bringing emergency
prep to where it is today. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Now, we have a couple of people that want to speak. Sheri
Furman.
Sheri Furman: In case you don't know, I'm Sheri Furman. Hello, Mayor
Scharff, Vice Mayor Kniss, Council Members. Annette's a very modest
person, so I'm going to keep this relatively brief. Annette and I have been friends and co-volunteers. She's been my mentor for over 20 years now in
emergency prep., in Palo Alto neighborhoods, in Midtown Residents
Association. Frankly, this recognition is long overdue for all the efforts she's
put in. She has ensured that many of us have received Proclamations from
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you including myself. I'm thrilled to see us finally recognize all the effort
she's put in. You've covered the big things. There are a lot of small things
that Annette has been involved in, particularly in Midtown. We got the
public art on the walls of Walgreens and CVS. The bears in Hoover Park
were an effort, the bathrooms in Seale Park for that matter. A big one that
a lot of people don't realize, if you've not been here a long time, is the final
completion of Greer Park, which for a long time was a maintenance yard and
all of that. One of Annette's greatest strengths is you can bring up the most
harebrained idea to her and she will smile and listen and compliment you for
your thoughts and give it consideration and always, always be kind about it,
unlike some of us. I'm happy that you've finally recognized what all of us
have known for a lot of years about the untiring efforts this women puts into
our community out of a love for us, the City, and all of that. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Becky Sanders.
Becky Sanders: Hi, there. I'm Becky Sanders; I live in Ventura. I know
Annette through the Media Center where somehow she got me to produce a
bunch of emergency prep videos for her. I know her through the Palo Alto
Neighborhoods Association where she pulled me in just to help out with a
few things. Then, somehow I started the Ventura Neighborhood Association.
I don't know how that happened. How does Annette do it? Everybody likes
her. She's super effective and sneaky. I'm not the only person. I've talked
to others here who have come under Annette's spell. I just want to proclaim
that Annette is a role model, a collaborator, a friend, a leader, a genius, a
manipulator—no—but all in a good cause. She builds consensus, and she is
very, very effective. Annette, I have never met anyone like you. I thank
you so much for all you have done personally for me, to me, and for this
City that we both love. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council. I
appreciate your time.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Annette, I just want to say thank you from all of
us. You're beloved of the City. Thank you very much.
Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions
Mayor Scharff: Agenda Changes and Deletions. We did have something,
didn't we?
James Keene, City Manager: Yes, Item Number 6, Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Scharff: Item Number 6, yes. Item Number 6, which was the
adoption of a Resolution amending the Evergreen Park/Mayfield Residential
Preferred Parking. Staff has requested this Item be continued to a date
uncertain. I'm going to move that we move it to a date uncertain.
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Council Member Wolbach: Second.
MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to
pull Agenda Item Number 6 - Adoption of Three Resolutions … to be heard
on a date uncertain.
Mayor Scharff: Second by Council Member Wolbach. If we could vote on
the board. That passes unanimously with Council Member Fine absent.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent
City Manager Comments
Mayor Scharff: Then we get to City Manager Comments.
James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of City
Council. Just following up on the Mayor's Motion on Item Number 6. We are
tentatively planning on bringing this item back as an Action Item on
January 29th, but that is not absolutely certain just looking at your schedule.
It's to get back as soon as we can after the Council break. As we pointed
out, this was an important break. It gives our Staff some time for more
discussion with neighborhood folks. There's been significant interest in this
item from both the business side and the residential side of our community.
We have scheduled a meeting for the evening of December 20th here at City
Hall in the Community Meeting Room on the first floor to support the dialog
between the different stakeholders and discuss the Staff recommendations
for some proposed modifications. The Southgate discussion will start at
6:30 P.M., and the Evergreen Park discussion will start at 7:30 P.M. We
recognize that not everyone may be available for this meeting, it being so
close to the holidays. We have scheduled a second, additional meeting in
the Community Meeting Room for Wednesday, January 10th, from 6:00 P.M.
to 9:00 P.M. Announcements for this meeting will go out to the public more
broadly soon. We hope those who have interest in these programs will be
able to attend either December 20th or January 10th before we return to
City Council. I did want to as a nice follow-up to some of the work concerns
that Annette Glanckopf helped represent on the volunteer side of our
community announce that again on January 16th from 6:30 P.M. we will
have the ceremony in the Council Chambers to honor our emergency
services volunteers and hear from disaster preparedness experts. On a couple of art-related projects, you may have noticed by now the new
temporary art installation out in King Plaza outside City Hall. The Artwork
Forge is the piece of work by Pittsburgh artist Toby Atticus Fraley. It's a
retro style, interactive robotic sculpture creating on-demand, unique
artworks for visitors in just a couple of minutes. It's inspired by mid-century popular science magazines. Artist Fraley's whimsical and thought-provoking
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artwork brings play and applied science together while potentially igniting
timely discussions about the evolving relationship between humans and
machines. By inserting four quarters—sorry, no Apple pay on this one; it's
retro—a visitor can watch their artwork being created by The Artwork Forge
and eventually deposited into a tray at the other end of the sculpture for
collection by the purchaser. That sculpture will remain on display through
April 2018. That's it on that item. Lastly, as part of the City's
Comprehensive Neighborhood Traffic Safety and Bicycle Boulevard project,
which represents a significant step towards Palo Alto's vision of a system of
neighborhood bike and pedestrian routes, the Public Art program is working
on a pilot neighborhood beautification project for Louis Road/Fielding Drive
intersection. We invited Palo Alto and Bay Area-based artists and graphic
designers to submit proposals for designs to be incorporated into newly
constructed bike and pedestrian Louis/Fielding raised intersection. As design guidelines, we ask that the proposals draw inspiration from the unique
character of the community, its history and diversity, or institutions and
landmarks that make this neighborhood distinct while enhancing safety and
connectivity for people biking and walking. Here is the proposed winning
concept by artist Damon Belanger called Go with the Flow, appropriately
named. In Chinese and Japanese culture, koi fish are symbolic of good
fortune, prosperity, and longevity. That's all I have to report other than I
will point out that there is in addition an at-places memo distributed today
for tomorrow's Policy and Services Committee meeting on the 2018 Council
Priority-setting process. It's information only at this point for the Council
and the community as a whole, but we will hear from the Council and
community members tomorrow night on proposed 2018 Priorities for the
Council's consideration. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you.
Oral Communications
Mayor Scharff: Oral Communications, do we have any Oral
Communications? It's right up here. Hamilton Hitchings, you'll have 3
minutes.
Hamilton Hitchings: Thank you. I came here tonight to help honor Annette. I'm one of the people who fell under her spell. That's actually not what I
was planning on talking to you about, but I'm just going to say a couple of
comments first. Annette also helped write our safety plan for the
Comprehensive Plan. She was one of the principle authors of that, which
will guide public safety for the next 15 years in Palo Alto. I am in a lot of meetings with Annette, and it's always very well organized. It's professional
executive. She definitely has drawn me much more into Palo Alto
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community affairs than I ever anticipated. I feel like my life's a lot richer, so
thank you, Annette. What I wanted to talk to you about is I work out at
(YMCA) about three times a week. There's a lot going on Ross Road. What
I'm really concerned about is child bike safety. The fundamental concept
behind the Ross Road bike boulevard is make bikes—a bike boulevard in the
middle of traffic in order to increase bike safety. They have eliminated any
ability not to drive in the middle of the road. What really bothers me with
that project is they have these simultaneous bulbs that have just enough
room for two cars to pass each other but no room for a bicycle. The way
they've done it is the bike is forced to come out into the middle of the road
from the side. I'm really worried some kid is going to be seriously injured.
I've never seen this configuration anywhere in Palo Alto with these
simultaneous bulbs that leave no room for the—they only leave enough
room for the cars and not for the bike or force the car to slow down so they don't hit the bike. It just takes one person who's rushing or somebody
who's not paying attention, and a kid's going to get run over. People get up
in the morning; they're off to work. The kids are all biking to school. I think
it's a very dangerous configuration. I think the fundamental design flaw is
that forcing bikes to swerve into traffic is not safe. I'd really ask that you
drive from Colorado to the YMCA and take a look for yourself at what I'm
talking about. This needs Council or executive intervention; otherwise, a kid
may get seriously hurt. Please give that your attention. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks, Hamilton. Maybe, City Manager Keene, you
could have somebody talk to Hamilton later about Ross Road.
James Keene, City Manager: Of course.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Our next speaker is Dr. Tim Mulcahy.
Dr. Tim Mulcahy: Good evening. Thanks for listening to me tonight. This is
about my thoughts on the pilot program in the Evergreen/Mayfield Park
area. We all understand the need to eliminate the long-term parking of the
people outside the district, but we've been part of this community for 9 to 20
years, in some instances. Now, we fund a program; my office is about
$2,000 in 8 months so far. We're still scrambling to re-park cars because
we don't have the lack of permits. Permits were available in the first round of the program, and many of you on the Council actually called and asked if
we were okay. We were, and now we're not. Six months into the program,
the permits that were there now are someplace else. Nobody seems to
know where they went to. I'm four short in my office, and there's about 40
short in the district for employees. It's interesting because the City did not actually survey the businesses to see how many employees this would
affect. It was done on density. Now that the density is now underneath and
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has worked to decrease the density in the district, the residents want no
more or less permits in the future. That's a problem for me. We shouldn't
have to scramble every 6 months to get a permit for the next 6 months. It
just doesn't make good business sense or it doesn't make good City sense.
The Council will need to revisit this, as you know, in the coming months. I
would respectfully ask the Council to consider realistic solutions to this
problem and give the community healthcare workers and the community
businesses some say in the final solution. Thank you very much for listening
to me tonight.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Dr. Doug Lew.
Dr. Doug Lew: My name's Doug Lew, and I work in the medical/dental
complex at the intersection of Park and El Camino. I've been there for 23
years now. Recently, parking has become a really big issue because I can't
get my staff to park nearby my office. When the Residential Parking Permit (RPP) program first started, we applied and were given six parking permits.
Somehow they got revoked. We got reassigned to park in Zone C. We're in
the north end of Evergreen; Zone C is between California and Page Mill. It's
1.1 miles. That's a little unreasonable, especially that I have five ladies who
work in dress clothes and heels. If it starts raining, it just makes it
unreasonable. I think the solution for the City is to reassess uses of the
streets and the distribution of the parking permits. Given 6 employee
parking permits in Zone C is not reasonable. I've driven around A, B, and C
during lunch time, and it's probably utilized maybe 35-40 percent. I know it
was evaluated before the RPP program started. I think it needs to get
reevaluated now. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Dr. Stan Bjelajac.
Dr. Stan Bjelajac: Good evening. Nice to see some familiar faces. What's a
night at the City Council without talking a little parking. Just a quick update
on Evergreen from my end of things. I'm a dentist in Evergreen; we're right
outside the assessment district on Park Avenue and El Camino. I'm also a
neighbor to a lot of wonderful people of them who are our patients. I want
to be a good neighbor. We had two phases of this program. For neighbors,
it was only Phase 1 as a year program. For us, it was split in two. On the neighbor end from the conversations I've had, some things got better, some
things didn't change much. On our end, thank you all for following up on us.
The first 6 months went great. According to the numbers, five people were
short permits. There were some things to be improved on. The second
phase mysteriously, according to our calculations, we're about 40 permits short. Presently, I've sat down with the neighbors; I've sat down with some
of our colleagues. I've identified four different issues. We can touch back
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on this during the meeting on the 20th. Renewal is one issue. If we were
allocated a permit, it shouldn't be sold before a new one gets renewed or to
somebody else. I should be able to have a right to renew it, and I didn't.
The other one is distribution. Neighbors can only buy a permit in Zone A,
which is our little area. Businesses should be the same. It makes a lot of
other issues going forward a lot better. Supply. We had some creative
ideas when we sat down on a limited basis to talk about increasing supply,
maybe incorporating El Camino in a way where it'll lessen the burden, take
away some clustering. Clustering is the last issue. Unfortunately, we feel
that the biggest burden of this was that, for our office, we had to re-park
cars. On average, our staff spends about 2 hours re-parking cars every
week. The cars are still in the neighborhood. We don't know where the new
cars came from, but we have some good ideas of how to fix this. We're
going to talk about this a lot more, but 8 months into the program what I'm hoping for when this comes around next time is to look at the big picture.
We all sit down together, and we introduce some flexibility maybe for us, for
the neighbors, and the City. We might have to do some harder things, but
we can make this work. The issue we ran into this time around is we called
the City and there was no way to release some emergency permits. We've
paid the extra money for scratchers; now there are no scratchers; now we're
re-parking cars. We're trying to find a way to come up with a way to make
this work. We hope we can count on a little bit of your help, a little bit of a
broader vision, and come up with a program that's going to be easily
renewable going into the future. Make it work for everybody. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Eric Wu.
Dr. Eric Wu: Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. Dr. Eric Wu,
orthodontist, Evergreen Park. I share many of the sentiments that my
dental colleagues have already touched upon. I basically just wanted to add
a few more things. There's been a lot of talk of community this evening. As
a 37-year resident of Palo Alto, it is the community that I grew up in as well
as the community that I decided to start up my business. Just recently
Councilman Tanaka sent out an email regarding how important it was that
neighborhood-serving businesses such as iSing and the new Mozart school were important contributors of value to our community. I completely agree,
that's why I support community organizations such as iSing. I'm sure many
of my dental colleagues do the same. It's important to continue to support
these neighborhood-serving businesses because, in fact, here in Palo Alto we
have world-class dentists, truly. Many of them are standing right here in this room. Frankly, we need to support the neighborhood-serving
businesses such as dentists just like the dentists service and provide world-
class dentistry to the community. Long story short, dentistry is under
attack. Rising costs, decreased reimbursements in insurance, and the rise of
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corporate dentistry is right around the corner. If we don't support our local-
serving businesses, we could be losing some of them in the future, and then
we'll lose some of the high-touch high-service dentistry to be substituted by
corporate dental clinics, which I'm sure no one wants. In summary, I would
just urge Council Members to consider our issues at the next upcoming
meetings regarding the RPP program in Evergreen Park. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Andrew Boone.
Andrew Boone: Good evening, Council Members. My name is Andrew
Boone. I live on Woodland Avenue. I would like to inform you about the
recent progress in Redwood City on that City's El Camino Real corridor plan.
Last week, the City Council approved their corridor plan they've been
working on for about a year and a half, which among many other things sets
a goal to install physically separated bike lanes on El Camino Real all the
way through Redwood City, all 2 1/2 miles of it. They would replace parallel car parking with bike lanes. The concept received a quite positive review.
All the Council Members had something good to say about it. They liked the
idea; they thought it was a step forward for the city. It's time that Palo Alto
review that concept as well. El Camino Real, just like in Redwood City, here
in Palo Alto is really not a usable street for people bicycling. It's not a
pleasant street to walk along or to cross. It is really a barrier to long-term
sustainable transportation. A lot of the things that you're working on,
creating a healthier community, creating a more sustainable community, are
undermined by the main street in the city being so auto-oriented. It doesn't
need to be that way. It doesn't need to be dangerous for people to ride
bikes. It doesn't need to be discouraging for people to walk or to ride
bicycles, but it's going to take some kind of study to look at what are your
options. In Palo Alto, you could replace the car parking with bike lanes as
Redwood City says they're going to do or reduce the number of lanes from
six lanes to four lanes. In Redwood City, they only have one choice really
because they only have four through-lanes in their downtown. I do
appreciate all the effort being put into creating new bicycle boulevards, like
on Ross Road and other streets, but those are really the streets that are not
dangerous. They're not difficult to walk or bike on. We need to stop ignoring our streets that are barriers to bicycling and fix them as well.
Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Pastor Bains.
Pastor Bains: Thank you, Mayor Scharff and Vice Mayor and City Council. I
actually put down the wrong Agenda Item on my slip, but I'll use this time. I just want to say thank you, Mr. Keene, for the selection of our Police Chief.
I think you guys did a good job on the selection process. We have a good
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Chief coming onboard. We know that Dennis Burns was very high shoes to
replace, but this is a good start with Chief Jonsen. I just want to say thank
you for that. Sorry for the mix up on the Agenda Item.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you.
Mr. Bains: I do agree with the man because I live over there by Ross.
Mayor Scharff: Stephanie Muñoz.
Stephanie Muñoz: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I'm
here to alert you to a problem that we have in Palo Alto. There are more
jobs than there are houses to hold the people that work at the jobs. This
has resulted, at the end of a long line, in homelessness. I believe we need
to get more housing, and we need to make a place for people who will never
be able to afford any kind of rental housing. I've decided that it doesn't
need to be what you call a real shelter. Some of them are very nice. The
religious women from different parishes come and cook a little meal. That's the women's shelter at least. The women lie down on their mattresses, and
it's fine. I don't think we have to be that wonderful. I just think we need to
have a room someplace and let them bring their own bedding to lie down on.
You have to have a safe place for women to be at night. You just have to.
It's just not proper not to. That's the first thing. The second thing is we're
missing a bet. There are people who could pay for housing if it were made
available to them. The Single Residence Occupancy (SRO) concept needs to
be elevated so that it is something very attractive, something that you
wouldn't mind living in yourself. Suppose you didn't have a job and you
couldn't get out too much and didn't have too many activities, you really just
want a nice, pleasant place to sleep. Those could be built. You do have to
have a simple modification in your description of what you want and what
you will permit in that I believe you should talk about the number of square
feet, just the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of a building, not the number of units. I
don't think it's fair to say that 14 people can't each have a bedroom because
you insist that it be only three people with five times as much space. It
doesn't seem as if it's fair. As I have mentioned, we do have the Federal
Government, and we have what I think is a disgrace. We have homeless
veterans. I believe the Federal Government could be pushed into providing housing for those veterans at Moffatt Field. I think they should, and I think
it would be greatly to our advantage if we were able to get them to do that.
Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Libby Lundgren.
Libby Lundgren: Hi. I'm Libby Lundgren; I help with the Safe Routes to School program. I just have heard a lot of grumbling about the Ross Road
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start of the bike boulevard project. I just wanted to make sure that
everybody gives the project a chance and understands that it's all part of a
master plan. A lot of the input came from the parents. Actually the purpose
of it was to help create a safer route for the schools and to help slow the
traffic to keep the kids safe on the roads. Maybe just make sure we get the
right education out to everybody on how to use the roads properly. That's
part of our program with educating the kids. It's new, but once people get
used to it and start understanding the benefits it should be okay.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you.
Minutes Approval
3. Approval of Action Minutes for the November 27 and December 4,
2017 Council Meetings.
Mayor Scharff: Now, we're at Minutes. Can I have a Motion to approve the
Minutes? I'll move to approve the Minutes. Can I have a second.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Second.
MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to approve
the Action Minutes for the November 27 and December 4, 2017 Council
Meetings.
Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously
with Council Member Fine absent.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent
Consent Calendar
Mayor Scharff: Now, we come to the Consent Calendar. Vice Mayor Kniss.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I would like to pull Agenda Item Number 14 with your
support.
Mayor Scharff: I'll support pulling Agenda Item Item Number 14.
MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff, third by
Council Member Tanaka to pull Agenda Item Number 14 - Adoption of an
Ordinance Amending Chapters 2.16… .
Mayor Scharff: That item is pulled. I guess we'll have that to a date
uncertain. Council Member Tanaka.
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Council Member Tanaka: I'd like to register a no vote on 12.
Mayor Scharff: Register a no vote on 12. I've got to write this down.
Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: I'd like to register a no vote on Number 9.
Mayor Scharff: Number 9, Council Member Holman. With that, can we vote
on the—I'll make a Motion to approve the—wait. Before I do that, we have a
bunch of speakers. There they are, a bunch of speakers. Pete Moffat to be
followed by Terry Holzemer.
Pete Moffat, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Hi. My name is
Pete Moffat, and I'm a general contractor. I've lived and worked in Palo Alto
for the past 30 years. We are coming into a time of trying to understand
how to deal with the dewatering process and the secant walls. In my
experience and history in Palo Alto, we've probably done 20 basements. Of
the 20, two we had to do dewatering on. We're appreciative of the Public Works process in getting to know or understand how the secant walls will
work. We think we'll do our first project this coming year. We're looking
forward to understanding how it affects our schedule and costs on a job and
how it works into the process of putting a basement in Palo Alto. While
we're excited about that process, we also understand that there are projects
where the secant wall is not feasible. The machines used to do the secant or
cutoff walls are quite large and not appropriate for any type of basement
retrofit work we do or putting a basement underneath an existing house. In
our projects in Palo Alto, understanding how to preserve existing houses and
historic houses, we come across these projects once every few years where
we're trying to put a basement under an existing house. In that particular
case, the secant wall doesn't seem like a viable option. We appreciate that
Public Works has worked at encouraging us to do the secant walls but is not
requiring it at this point. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Terry Holzemer.
Terry Holzemer, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Thank you,
Council Members, for the opportunity to come and speak to you tonight. I'd
like to take a minute to encourage you to support Item Number 10 on the
Consent Calendar, which regards the dewatering requirements. This item needs immediate attention and support so limits and enforcements can be
put in place to cut down and reduce the tremendous amount of waste of one
of our most critical and important natural resources, which is our
groundwater. There are several flaws in this Ordinance that need to be
changed or adjusted or corrected for that matter, especially those involving commercial projects. I live next to one of the largest dewatering projects
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the City has ever faced. In the past year, from June until the end of
October, over 45 million gallons of our groundwater was taken out of the
ground. It's gone forever. It's gone into our wastewater system. This is a
tremendous waste and a disappointment that this water was lost from our
City. I believe, however, this Ordinance that is on the Consent Calendar is a
good first effort to address this desperate need for a solution. Second, I'd
like to just take a moment to appreciate the honor of Annette Glanckopf
tonight for her service to this great City. As a member of Palo Alto
Neighborhood (PAN) for over 10 years, I have seen her tireless work and her
effort on a regular basis. She has worked tirelessly on emergency
preparedness and earthquake preparations as well. I want to thank Annette
for being the great resource, which she truly is, in this City. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Sterling Banks to be followed by Fred Balin.
Sterling Banks, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Good evening. My name's Sterling Banks; I work for S. G. Banks, Inc., the local dewatering
contractor in the Bay Area. I came to speak about basement dewatering in
Palo Alto. The goal here is to minimize groundwater discharge. What this
will do is minimize the depletion of underground aquifers. It'll also minimize
negative impacts to existing landscaping and potentially reduce the
settlement and subsidence issues, which may occur from extended
dewatering. How do we do this? The current rules in place require, if the
homeowner is going to build a basement into the water table, a geotechnical
report be provided. The City of Palo Alto requires only one test bore be
provided with this geotechnical report. We would like to have four test bores
provided with the geotechnical report as well include a piezometer if you're
going to build a basement in the water table. We also want to have a Motion
to allow sumping. Sumping combined with dewatering wells will allow less
groundwater discharge to the nearby storm drain. What we would like to
see happen is better data upfront. This will allow us to do a better
engineering design on the dewatering system for residential and commercial
basements. Better data upfront will potentially decrease the dewatering well
depth and count and decrease the overall groundwater discharge from the
site. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Fred Balin to be followed by Rita Vrhel.
Fred Balin, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Good evening. I'd
like to thank Palo Alto Groundwater for their research, education, and
activism on this matter; for the City of Palo Alto for taking up their charge
not only to save Palo Alto groundwater but also, to my point tonight, to prevent other deleterious effects from interfering with groundwater flow.
For all the truly amazing scientific and technical benefits over the decades in
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the Valley, there are some byproducts that those less civic-minded might
prefer to keep under the surface. Therefore, I'm pleased to see definitions
in the Ordinance before you tonight for groundwater plume, groundwater
plume area, and groundwater exclusionary techniques. When you dewater
an aquifer, if there are any volatile organic compounds in there, they'll move
as well and, thereby, you extend the risk of vapor intrusion of cancer-
causing substances into a nearby area. After you move forward on Rev 2
here, I'm really looking forward to the next rev of this to have some
statements within the Ordinance that say how you're going to implement
specific ways to protect residents from groundwater plumes that may be
impacted by people taking out water within basements. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Rita Vrhel to be followed by Kimberley Wong.
Rita Vrhel, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Good evening. I
want to thank everybody who has come out tonight to speak on the Dewatering Ordinance. This is the first time that we've had representatives
from the construction industry join with Save Palo Alto's Groundwater in
supporting an Ordinance. I would particularly like to thank Phil Bobel and
the Public Works Department. They had a stakeholders meeting on 11/30,
which was open to the public and the construction industry. We sat down,
and everybody had incredible input into the process. I would ask that the
City Council approve the Ordinance revisions on the Consent Calendar as
listed and also as proposed by Staff; direct Staff to follow up in the first
quarter of 2018 with additional amendments to the Dewatering Ordinance
that would address the concerns mentioned by the speakers so far and that
will be mentioned by the speakers forthcoming. Dewatering does not have
to be a win-lose situation. With careful thought and consideration and
implementation, it can be a win-win. Dewatering can occur but can occur on
a limited basis thereby protecting property owners' rights to maximize the
value of their property and address community concerns and preserve a
really vital, valuable, irreplaceable, once-it's-gone-it's-gone resource that is
the one thing that is vital to all life. You're going to be talking about
sustainability later on tonight. It starts with water. Part of the City of Palo
Alto has come up the amount of sustainable groundwater that can be extracted each year, and that is 2,500 acre feet. The dewatering will
subtract from that. We can all work together to make this happen. Thank
you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Kimberley Wong to be followed by Bob Moss.
Kimberley Wong, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Mayor, Council Members, my name is Kimberley Wong, and I'm a longtime resident
of Palo Alto. I first began noticing dewatering about 10 years back when
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Castilleja was building their gym across the street from my house. Water
was gushing out for months. I've noticed it happening all over town since
then. Most recently during a Bike Palo Alto event, I saw water gushing onto
California Avenue in the morning hours and many hours after when I rode by
again. With more and more residents wanting to maximize the property
values and more commercial developers wanting to build underground
parking, we have a big problem. Groundwater is not unlimited; it must be
conserved. I ask the City Council to support the Public Works'
recommendation and approve their 2018 Dewatering Ordinance. Also, I ask
you to accept Staff's recommendations to return with substantive additions
to the Ordinance early in 2018. These additions will make the 2018
Dewatering Ordinance stronger and address public concerns. Both parts are
necessary; one without the other is inadequate. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bob Moss to be followed by Dan Garber.
Bob Moss, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Thank you, Mayor
Scharff and Council Members. This Ordinance is a good start, but it's not
really going to solve the problem. What the City should be doing is the
same thing that Mountain View has done for more than 20 years. Don't
build any basements. There have not been any structures in Mountain View,
either commercial or residential, with a basement since 1993. That certainly
hasn't kept people from building and living in Mountain View. One of the
things that creates a real problem when you have a basement is Palo Alto's
aquifers are shallow. The aquifer under our house—we're several miles from
the Bay—is 21 feet. East of Middlefield, the aquifer in some places is as little
as 5 or 6 feet. A basement is going to penetrate the aquifer, deplete our
precious groundwater, and interfere with water flow. Another possibility,
depending on where you're building it, is it will disturb contaminated soil and
groundwater and create real physical problems. It generates vapor into the
buildings around it, which is contaminated and can poison people. It's a bad
idea to have basements that come anywhere close to the aquifer. If you
don't want to have to look at every single project and measure how deep the
groundwater is there, do what Mountain View has done and just don't allow
them. That will eliminate the problem, and we won't have to have this issue anymore.
Mayor Scharff: Dan Garber to be followed by David Page.
Dan Garber, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Regarding Item
Number 10, Public Works' 2017 findings show that a cutoff wall can reduce
the amount of water removed from a site to zero or nearly so. This is a dramatic validation of this approach. Although Public Works'
recommendations to Council allow for both regular broad-area dewatering
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and a cutoff wall to be used, the financial and procedural and scheduling
requirements to use the standard broad-area dewatering strategy are so
burdensome that I do not know why any homeowner looking to build in an
area of high groundwater would not pursue a cutoff wall instead. Save Palo
Alto Groundwater supports Staff's recommendation that regular broad-area
dewatering require a hydrologist's report. Assuming the hydrologist's report
is made with the intent of optimizing dewatering system design, it will
enable significantly reduced groundwater pumping regardless of the method
chosen. Regarding cost, the general contractor who did the cutoff wall on
Webster that took zero water offsite reports that the cost was nearly the
same as doing regular broad-area dewatering. That work has also
contributed significantly to other learnings. Importantly, doing a cutoff wall
will allow us to possibly eliminate costly backfill, which is important. Market
forces are also driving the cutoff wall costs down. In a recent conversation, the cutoff wall vendor is already looking at technologies and methods that
will reduce costs by a third and reduce the 6-10 week process of doing a
regular broad-area dewatering to something closer to 2 weeks. Staff's
recommendations will drive both significant cost and scheduling reductions
that create important inducements to a homeowner and drive dramatic
conservation of our community's underground aquifers.
Mayor Scharff: David Page to be followed by Keith Bennett.
David Page, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: Hi everyone.
David Page from Midtown. I wanted to speak about Item 11, the net
metering. My wife and I had a contractor come out to our property today to
look at putting solar panels on the roof. He informed us that we are lucky
with our timing because Palo Alto is cutting off incentives for net metering
and solar panels as of the end of the year, the end of the month. I do not
understand this type of thinking. It seems like the opposite direction of
being sustainable. Maybe there's something going on that I don't
understand. I would strongly recommend we move in the direction of
providing more incentives for homeowners and everybody else to be more
sustainable and creating less pollution. If the comeback is going to be about
carbon offsets, then my understanding is, if you look into what happens in the Third World with so-called carbon offsets, they're a really terrible,
horrible idea. Thank you very much.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Keith Bennett to be followed by Joan Larrabee.
Keith Bennett, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: I'm Keith
Bennett, an active member of Save Palo Alto's Groundwater, a group of 300 persons interested in Palo Alto's groundwater. Would those in the audience
interested in construction dewatering please stand? Our diverse concerns
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include managing groundwater as the resource it is; keeping toxic plumes in
place; applicants and contractors desiring clear, cost-effective, practical
regulations; maintaining soil moisture for our canopy; protecting
infrastructure and properties from damage; as well as the role soil and
groundwater play in both flood protection and, therefore, public safety and
storm water management. We ask the Council to approve the Consent
Calendar Item Number 10; however, don't stop there. Please come back
early in 2018 with a comprehensive Ordinance addressing the many open
issues, which we provided in a list of comments to Council, as proposed by
Staff in their response to question by Council Member Kou. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Joan Larrabee.
Joan Larrabee, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Good evening,
Honorable Mayor and City Council Members. I'm Joan Larrabee; I live at
777 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, in the Greenhouse condominium complex. Our most recent newsletter has an article that says please limit water usage.
It mentions we're still under drought conditions as we all know from all of
the fires up in the wine country and down in Southern California. At the
Greenhouse, we've been very good about saving water. We have our lawns
planted with drought-resistant grass. We've replaced the overhead
sprinklers. We've computerized and have timers on our watering. We're
doing what other Palo Alto residents and business people have done. We
have spent money and time and effort to reduce our water usage. In fact,
I've even read the Palo Alto water use guidelines, which I found out our
water can be restricted by the City. They can come out, if you're using too
much, and put a little knob on your water line. We are like the other 66,000
residents and business people; we've worked hard to do this. While
residents have been reducing our water usage and spending money and
making an effort, we find out that developers have not. For instance, I live
across the street from where two Marriott hotels are going. They're five
stories high. In order to maximize the use of the space, they are going to
put underground parking, and the underground parking of course will require
a great deal of dewatering because we are so close to the Bay. The aquifer
underneath where the hotels are proposed is 7 feet. That goes from the floor to the tip of my fingers; that's 7 feet. I expect the developer should
also have to save water like the rest of us do. Please approve Item 10 on
the Consent Calendar. I understand additional Staff time and
recommendations will address the use of the cutoff walls. I recommend that
you all approve that and give the Staff time and money to work on this. Dewatering should be reduced and not expanded. Please save Palo Alto's
groundwater. Thank you.
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Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Muñoz to be followed by Joseph
Rahn.
Stephanie Muñoz, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: Thanks,
folks. I won't take your time. I want only to remind you of something that
you might like to be reminded of. Attention to the water, which is in the
ground, is nothing new. Fifty years ago when we built our house in Los Altos
Hills, we could not just dig a well, which I wanted to do. No, they were
going to charge us $10,000 to put in this well. At the time we couldn't
afford, so we didn't do it. They were following the lead of the County. The
County also does not let you just dig a well willy-nilly on the supposition that
the groundwater belongs to you. Doesn't belong to you; it belongs to the
community. There you are. It does give you pause if the developers are
given more of the community resources than the regular citizens that live
here. Thanks. Bye-bye.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Joseph Rahn.
Joseph Rahn, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: Hi. My name's
Joseph Rahn, and I'm a resident of Palo Alto for 37 years. I also started a
business called the Purple Pipe Company. We come and get the
groundwater and reuse on City property, just landscaping at small pocket
parks. Right now, at the high-flow, broad-area dewatering sites, we're only
able to recapture about 2 percent of the water. There's an Ordinance where
we come 1 day a week and get the water and reuse it. Right now, there's
just not a whole lot of areas to come and take the water and dump it. We
have to hand apply it. I'm just saying that in the future, if there were more
infrastructure projects at parks, we could reuse that water and replace the
potable drinking water use at City parks. Right now, with the Ordinance how
it's going to go next year, we might recapture 3 percent of that water. If
there were actually some places to dump the water, we could get it up to
10-20 percent of that water. If the broad-area dewatering were more
tailored to be site-specific, that number might go up some more. Two-thirds
of the groundwater dewatering was from two commercial sites this past
season. I think there's going to be another one on San Antonio Road at
Lafayette, which should be a huge number of gallons. The other residential sites, there are two roads you could do, the secant walls and the broad-area
dewatering. I just think after 10 seasons of putting in secant walls at
residential sites, you might have secant walls which take up—they go down
35 feet, which is 20 feet below where a basement might go. After 10 years
of doing this, is there some sort of long-term effect? Does an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) have to be done? Will it affect the flood zone? Who
knows what's going to happen? I'm not knocking either one. I do have
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some business interest in the whole thing. I do believe that both should be
available and tailored to be more site-specific. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, if we could vote on the Consent Calendar
with—let me get this right—Council Member Tanaka voting no on Item 12
and Council Member Holman voting no on Item Number 9.
Vice Mayor Kniss: And pulling Number 14.
Mayor Scharff: Yes, and pulling Number 14.
Beth Minor, City Clerk: We need a Motion to approve.
Mayor Scharff: I'll make the Motion to approve.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I'll second it.
MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to approve
Agenda Item Numbers 4-5, 7-13.
4. Approval and Authorization for the City Manager to Execute
Amendment Number 1 to the Mills Act Historic Property Preservation Agreement for 900 University Avenue (Squire House) Removing the
Public Tour Requirement Consistent With State Law.
5. Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Chapter 2.11 of Title 2 of the
Palo Alto Municipal Code to Reauthorize Public, Education, and
Government (PEG) Access Fees That Will Apply to Comcast as it
Provides Service Under its State Video Franchise.
6. Adoption of Three Resolutions: 1) Resolution Amending Evergreen
Park-Mayfield Residential Preferential Parking Program Resolution
9663; and 2) Resolution Amending Southgate Residential Preferential
Parking Program Resolution 9688, Both to Adjust the Number and
Allocation of Employee Parking Permits; and 3) Resolution Establishing
a Two-hour Parking Restriction on the East Side of El Camino Real
Between College Avenue and Park Boulevard and in the Commercial
Zones Adjacent to 1515 El Camino Real and 1638 El Camino Real.
(STAFF REQUESTS THIS ITEM BE CONTINUED TO A DATE UNCERTAIN)
7. Approval of a Three Year Contract With Downtown Streets, Inc. in a
Total Amount Not-to-Exceed $410,616 for Maintenance Services for
the City's Five Downtown Parking Garages, Downtown Sidewalks and
Alleys, Lytton and Cogswell Plaza, the Stanford/Palo Alto Playing Fields, City Hall and the old Community Garden, and Provide Outreach
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Case Management Services to the Downtown Core With the Intent of
Linking Homeless Individuals to Community and Housing Services.
8. Approval of the Appointment of Robert A. Jonsen as Police Chief and
Approval of an Employment Agreement.
9. Approval of Amendment Number 1 to Contract Number C16162262
With Biggs Cardosa Associates, Inc., Increasing Compensation in an
Amount Not-to-Exceed $476,893 to Provide Final Design and Right of
Way Services for the Highway 101 Pedestrian/Bicycle Overpass Project
(PE-11011).
10. Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Chapter 16.28 of Title 16 of the
Palo Alto Municipal Code to Revise the Requirements for Dewatering
During Construction of Below Ground Structures.
11. Resolution 9728 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo
Alto Extending the Net Energy Metering (NEM) Program to all Eligible
Customer-Generators Until the City's Total Distributed Generation
Demand Exceeds 10.8 MW, or Until December 31, 2017, Whichever
Occurs Later.”
12. Adoption of Updated Salary Schedules per Memorandums of
Agreement (MOAs) for Palo Alto Peace Officers’ Association (PAPOA),
Palo Alto Police Managers’ Association (PAPMA), International
Association of Fire Fighters, (IAFF) Local 1319, and Palo Alto Fire
Chiefs’ Association (PAFCA).
13. Ordinance 5422 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo
Alto Approving and Adopting Plans for Park Improvements to the
Baylands Related to the 101 Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge.” (FIRST
READING: November 27, 2017 PASSED: 9-0).
14. Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Chapters 2.16 (Boards and
Commissions Generally), 2.18 (Public Art Commission), 2.20 (Planning
and Transportation Commission), 2.21 (Architectural Review Board),
2.22 (Human Relations Commission), 2.24 (Library Advisory
Commission) and 2.25 (Parks and Recreation Commission) of Title 2
(Administrative Code) of the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Modify the
Start of Terms on the Boards and Commissions, and accompanying Code Cleanup in Chapters 2.22 and 2.25.
Mayor Scharff: That passes unanimously with Council Member Fine absent.
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MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 9 PASSED: 7-1 Holman no, Fine
absent
MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 12 PASSED: 7-1 Tanaka no, Fine
absent
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent
James Keene, City Manager: Mr. Mayor, with the Council's indulgence for a
few minutes, I would like to introduce our new Police Chief—approval of the
appointment by the Council that you just voted on—Robert or Bob Jonsen,
who is here this evening. Appreciate the comments from Pastor Bains. I
would just share that we had an extremely competitive process, an
outstanding pool of candidates, and community, Staff, and Public Safety and
Justice System comprehensive panels who were involved in this selection
process. It really is with great pleasure that I would like to introduce Bob
Jonsen as Palo Alto's next Police Chief. He'll be starting his employment on January 9th. Bob, if you wouldn't mind coming up to the podium and
introducing yourself to the Council, before you move onto your Action
Agenda.
Robert Jonsen: Thank you, Mr. Keene. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council
Members, obviously City Staff. I'd really like to extend my appreciation and
thanks to the members of the community who were part of the recruitment
process. I want to thank all of you for the honor you've bestowed on me by
selecting me as the next Chief for the Palo Alto Police Department. I will
absolutely give my best to provide leadership and stability to a department
full of amazing men and women who give their all and who truly care and
want to serve this tremendous community every day with professionalism,
integrity, and respect. To the community members, as you can clearly see,
I'm not Dennis Burns. To state the obvious, I lack his height, and I clearly
lack his full head of hair. What I can assure is that I have a heart of equal
size, and I will engage with you as my predecessors have set as a standard
and an expectation that I know all of you have for this great community.
Public safety is something that requires team work within all its members. It
does not fall upon one individual, one department. It takes a true
community effort. I will look forward to working with all of you for many years to come. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Chief Jonsen, I just wanted to welcome you to Palo Alto and
thank you for joining us. I've heard great things about you, and we look
forward to your service. Now, for our first item, we're a little behind
schedule. I apologize. I got thrown off for that. Go ahead, Greg.
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Council Member Tanaka: This is Item 12. It might actually be okay, but the
main issue I have with it is the quality of the Report. The quality of the
Report is, in my opinion, very lacking. The basis of this was to do a survey
of nearby cities to understand how the pay compares here versus other
cities. In this Report, which is only 2 pages, it fails to even do that.
Nowhere in this Report does it actually have the figures. I was very
disappointed. The thing that made me pause is when I looked at, let's say,
a nearby city of Mountain View and do the basic math of how much in dollars
per employees. Palo Alto is number one in almost every single category. To
say we're below 5-9 percent doesn't make sense to me. For me, I would like
to see Staff actually provide some figures. If they did the survey Report,
they should provide it. It is very counterintuitive to say that we're 5-9
percent below our neighboring cities. At the same time if you do the math,
just about any other city, Menlo Park, Mountain View, other cities, we are way ahead. For instance for Fire, we are $296 per employee; Mountain View
is at $284; Redwood City is at $228. We're significantly ahead, not just by a
little bit, by a lot. I would appreciate to actually see, if the survey was done
as per the contract, to actually have it in there. The second thing is last
week we had our Finance Committee meeting. We looked at the Long Range
Financial Forecast. Revenue is roughly going up about 3 percent. Our
expenses are growing between 2.3 and 3.7 percent. This means next year
we'll have a $2.5 million structural deficit. At the increases we've been
giving, fire has been getting a 25-percent increase over this period of time,
police is 18 percent. The Report talks about 2.5 percent, but it's 2.5 percent
for 6 months. That's equivalent to a 5 percent a year. The pay raise is
greatly outstripping our City's capacity to pay for it. That's also very
concerning. The most disturbing part is that this Report is, in my mind,
totally lacking. If the survey was done, why not give it to the Council, why
not present the figures? It doesn't jive with what you see, if you just do
basic math, to other cities. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: I lodged a no vote on Number 9 because it is an
Amendment to a contract for design services having to do with the pedestrian-bicycle bridge. This item was just in front of us a couple of
weeks ago. I'm troubled when we see disjointed considerations of things. It
seems to me either we ought to consider a $0.5 million cost change, which is
what this is basically. We ought to see that in conjunction with the
approvals that we considered just a couple of weeks ago. Again, it's not a show of not having support for the bridge. It's the procedural thing, that we
aren't considering the cost increases in conjunction with the item that we
had in front of us 2 weeks ago. Thank you.
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Mayor Scharff: Thank you.
Action Items
15. Discuss and Accept the Draft 2018-2020 Sustainability Implementation
Plan (SIP) Key Actions as a Work Program for 2018-2020 and Direct
Staff on Next Steps.
Mayor Scharff: Now, we come to our first Action Item, which is discuss and
accept the draft 2018-2020 Sustainability Implementation Plan, key actions,
etc. Go ahead.
Gil Friend, Chief Sustainability Officer: Good evening, Mayor Scharff, Vice
Mayor Kniss, Council Members. Thank you for the opportunity to talk with
you about the next step in Palo Alto's sustainability journey, the 2018-2020
Sustainability Implementation Plan (SIP). The goal of this session is to
discuss and accept the Plan. You see here the trajectory of the
conversations that we've had to date. We were with you to discuss a draft of this Plan in June. You requested that we come back with something more
focused. In the ensuing months, several dozen Staff people from multiple
departments have worked on focusing the Plan, supported by a 3-year work
plan that detailed the specifics of actions, of which you're going to see the
summary tonight, the timelines and the responsible departments by year
over the next 3 years. Several of the Staff members who worked on this
process are here tonight. Several of them will share in the presentation that
we're making now. Others are available in the audience to answer your
questions, should you have them. Here for memory refreshment and to set
the context is the trajectory that we've been on. Going back to the baseline
year of 1990, considerable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from our
carbon neutral electricity program, our efficiency programs, green building
programs, and many others. We now sit with our emissions about 34-36
percent below the baseline year. When we do the analysis for 2017, we
anticipate we'll be somewhere between 40 and 54 percent, depending on
how you count carbon offsets, and puts us on a trajectory to our 80 percent
target by 2030. We think it is largely within reach significantly because of
the rapid growth of electric vehicles both in our community and around us. I
just want to note that, even though the chart shows a straight line, we don't anticipate these reductions are going to follow exactly on a straight line.
We're not trying to manage to that line but to the goal for 2030. You asked
that we focus the SIP more tightly, and we thought the place to focus is on
the two big issues of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Water (H2O), greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions and water resilience. Within those two focus areas, we've selected four of the ten areas we had identified in the prior draft of the
Implementation Plan, energy, Electric Vehicles (EV), mobility, and water.
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For each of them, we've outlined several key goals that we think should
guide the effort over the coming years. Let's take a look at each of these
domains in turn with the key person from each lead department. You'll see
two slides for each of these areas. They'll summarize a qualitative overview
of the story, if you will, of our aspirations in that area and then more
specifics looking at the key goals, the strategic moves that we'll make, the
key actions that we'll need to undertake to achieve those goals, and the key
performance indicators by which we will guide our efforts and enable you to
track our progress.
Christine Tam, Utilities Senior Resource Planner: Good evening. My name is
Christine Tam; I'm a Senior Resource Planner in the Utilities Department.
Starting with the energy area, we have two focuses that we're talking about
here. We're going to pursue all cost-effective energy efficiency, and we're
also going to shift building energy use from natural gas to electricity where appropriate. This is a collaborative effort between the Utilities Department
and Development Services Department (DSD) with the common goal of
deeply reducing carbon emissions by making it easy for consumers to
choose clean energy sources. While natural gas is a fossil fuel and is hard to
clean up the way that electricity can be cleaned up, we are using currently
carbon offsets as a transitional measure to compensate for the City's energy
usage in this area just in the short term. To reduce natural gas use, we are
continuing to push for more efficiency in buildings through voluntary rebate
program and building mandates. We will target both new and existing
building stock from the construction phase through ongoing operations of
these buildings. Further reduction in gas usage will come from voluntary
building electrification, and Palo Alto is the first mover in this area. We
launched a heat pump water heater rebate program about a year. Since
then, we have developed a permitting process for replacing gas water
heaters with electric heat pump water heaters. We are continuing to look at
different ways to increase uptake of heat pump technologies by both
residents and businesses. Obviously, electrification raises a number of
questions that we still need to address including the importance of resiliency
as we rely more on electricity, the impact on our electric supply portfolio as well as the impacts of reduced gas sales on the gas utility. We will explore
these areas through various utility strategic planning efforts currently in
progress. Now, I will pass it onto my Colleague to address mobility. Thank
you.
Josh Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Good evening. I'm Josh Mello, the Chief Transportation Official with the City. Mobility and transportation
currently represents 66 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions in the City
of Palo Alto. Our goal with this focus area is to leverage the growth of new
mobility modes but reduce the pain and the impacts of commuting. This is a
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two-pronged approach where we're looking to address greenhouse gas
emissions but also reduce congestion and the impacts that congestion have
on the community. The key goals in this focus area of mobility include
reducing Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) travel and then making it more
convenient to not drive. We've worked very closely with our folks in the
Sustainability Office to identify some key actions over the next 3 years. A
lot of these are already in process through our group. These include fully
funding the Transportation Management Association (TMA). You can recall
recently, this fiscal year, you've allocated the bulk of the permit fee
increases Downtown to help fund the TMA. We're also working to introduce
technology that will bring what's called mobility as a service to fruition
starting with some projects involving City Staff. We're continuing to build
out our bicycle network identified in the 2012 Bike Plan and also strategically
implement safety and mobility changes to roadways as roadways are resurfaced and through regular maintenance programs in other City
departments. We'll be bringing forward a Citywide bikeshare regulation
early in 2018 to attempt to introduce some private-sector operators in the
City of bikeshare systems. We'll also be bringing forward some additional
bikeway and shuttle programs and projects to address some of the first and
last-mile solutions that folks typically struggle with when trying to access
transit. Some key performance indicators in this sector include the SOV
commute mode share for employees within the City of Palo Alto. We'll also
be tracking transit riderships on routes that serve Palo Alto and also the rate
of participation by employers and commuter benefit programs. The basic
approach here is to support and extend existing transportation services,
make them more attractive, flexible, and responsive, and also encourage
emerging new modes of transportation.
Hillary Rupert, Sustainability Consultant: Thanks for that, Josh. Thank you,
City Council Members and Vice Mayor and Mayor Scharff, for listening to our
Sustainability Implementation Plan this evening. My name is Hillary Rupert,
and I'm a sustainability consultant working on the EV front here at the City
of Palo Alto. Our aspiration is to build on Palo Alto's early adoption of EVs,
to prepare for the continued shift that we'll see from moving from fossil fuels to electric vehicles. What we'd like to be able to say is that Palo Alto has the
most comprehensive program in the Nation to make owning and operating
an EV more convenient and economical than gasoline-fueled vehicles. Let
me set some context for you. As my colleague in mobility just mentioned,
greenhouse gas emissions in Palo Alto are at 66 percent, and that measure was taken in 2016. EVs are one of the key strategies that we can use to
reduce those greenhouse gas emissions. Palo Alto has one of the highest, if
not the highest, EV penetration rates in the United States. In 2015, more
than 15 percent of all new vehicles purchased in Palo Alto were electric. In
2016, Palo Alto led the electric vehicle market share at 22 percent. Just to
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give you some regional context here, Los Altos was at 21 percent, and
Saratoga was at 20 percent. A lot of the other cities that we see in this
region have very high adoption rates of electric vehicles. Based on the
preliminary internal forecast modeling that we've done, we expect this trend
to continue not only in Palo Alto but also regionally. This will impact the
number of inbound electric vehicles that are coming into this area for work
or for shopping or for other activities. Our key goal again is to make EVs
more convenient to drive. Our key strategies are really two-fold on this. We
want to build out public and private infrastructure to support the rising EV
growth rate. We also want to explore and evaluate incentives, outreach,
policies, and financing options to stimulate the charging infrastructure and
EV ownership and use. So far we've had some pretty good success. We've
expanded public chargers; we've developed an electric vehicle fleet
procurement policy; we've added a pricing policy for EV charging; we've provided rebates for EV infrastructure for businesses and organizations.
We've held three very successful EV outreach events within the last year;
one of them was at Palo Alto Earth Day; another was with National Drive
Electric Week; and then lastly we held one in conjunction with the Stanford
health improvement program. We held an EV workshop last October. We've
got some momentum going. We need to continue to build upon this
momentum. There are some key steps for how we can do this. First, we
need to publicize streamlined permitting and provide some more information
on City of Palo Alto-funded transformer upgrades. We need to consider
expanding EV readiness into existing buildings. We already see that in new
infrastructure, but we can explore options of looking into existing buildings.
We need to develop a business plan to expand upon EV charging deployment
on private property—this includes work places and multiunit dwellings—
expanding EV deployment in the City fleet; consider expanding additional EV
charging infrastructure; supporting regional group-by programs. Based
upon the regional context, this is something we can definitely look at and
consider. Lastly, we'd like to continue to build upon the public awareness of
electric vehicle options. To achieve these actions, we'll need to have multi-
departmental collaboration. We'll revitalize our electric vehicle task force, which will consist of internal engagement within the City of Palo Alto Staff.
We'll also continue our external engagement with our key partners. We've
identified two Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to track our progress. One
is obviously the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which we hope to
see, as well as continued EV growth rate. I just want to close this out by saying that right now Palo Alto has a real opportunity to inspire and lead on
the EV front here. A lot of the other cities look to Palo Alto because they
want to know what is Palo Alto doing, how can we model what Palo Alto is
doing, how can we bring that into our City. There's great potential here to
also have national influence. With that, I thank you very much for your
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time. I'll pass you over to my colleague who will discuss the water portion
of the Implementation Plan. Thank you.
Karla Dailey, Senior Resource Planner: Good evening. My name's Karla
Dailey; I'm a Senior Resource Planner in Utilities. Palo Alto has done a great
job at conserving water over the past few years, particularly during the
height of the drought. Our highest priority will still be the efficient use of
water. Climate change and the shifting precipitation patterns that come with
it led us to our aspirational goal of reducing our reliance on imported water
and moving more toward a world where we're matching the right water
quality with the end use of water as much as possible. In an ideal world, we
would not be flushing our toilets with pristine Hetch Hetchy water; clearly
that's not the best use of that resource. Our three specific goals are to
reduce consumption; ensure adequate supply; and protect our water
resources. An important metric for us is going to be the increased use of our recycled water. Recycled water is a local, sustainable resource. To the
extent we can reuse it as much as possible, we also go a long way toward
protecting our Bay. There are two projects I'd like to call your attention to.
One is the recycled water strategic plan on which we have been collaborating
with the Santa Clara Valley Water District very closely. When that plan is
complete, we will be bringing recommendations to you regarding expanded
use of recycled water as a non-potable resource as well as looking toward
the future and exploring options for potable use of that water resource. The
second thing that we will bring to you will be projects that will reduce the
salinity of that recycled water, making it more appealing and expanding its
use. We'll also be exploring ways to use nontraditional, non-potable water
resources more fully such as gray water and storm water. Again, storm
water has that added benefit of protecting our Bay as well. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Is there …
Mr. Friend: A couple more, very briefly. That's the summary of the
Sustainability Implementation Plan and work plan. On your screen you have
a recap of the key performance indicators that are going to guide this work
and provide a basis for evaluating our progress. The next steps following
hopefully acceptance and adoption of this Plan tonight will be to come back to Council periodically over the next 3 years for the adoption of any
individual key actions that we've just been over with you and that might
require Council authorization for new policies or programs or seek a review
or other needs for Council action. In Fiscal Year (FY) '19, we'll begin
preparing the 2020 update of the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan which, as you'll recall, was first begun in 2014. We'll update the framework
and the Implementation Plans for the next coming years and seek a review
of the entire Sustainability Climate Action Plan (S/CAP) at that time with an
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anticipation of in FY 2020 coming to Council with the S/CAP and the
companion California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review for formal
adoption of the entire Plan. Our recommendations to you tonight are to
accept the 2018-2020 Implementation Plan and to find this action exempt
from environmental review under CEQA Guidelines. That ends our opening
presentation. We'd love to hear your questions and discussion.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. We have a number of public speakers, I believe.
We'll go to the public. You'll each have 2 minutes, and we have 12 public
speakers. The first one is Susan Stansbury.
Susan Stansbury: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. My
name is Susan Stansbury, and I live on Josina Avenue. Thank you for your
commitment to sustainability and climate action. I'm very proud of our City
for taking a leadership role in this crucial effort to ensure a livable future on
our planet. I'm here tonight to not only laud our efforts but also to ask you to take the additional step in divesting from fossil fuels. In reading through
the Guiding and Design Principles, divestment of City funds from fossil fuels
is a complementary and necessary step to meet our goals. Under the Plan's
Guiding Principles (GP), it states "[s]eek to improve quality of life as well as
environmental quality, economic health, and social equity. Foster a
prosperous, robust, and inclusive economy. Recognize Palo Alto's role as a
leader and linkages with regional, national, and global community." When
reading this, I think of our water (inaudible) friends out in North Dakota who
nonviolently and prayerfully stood up to the fossil fuel industry last year to
stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from crossing the Missouri River. In the
end, the current Administration and the fossil fuel industry steamrolled over
the rights of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and now their water is at risk. I
stand with them in this request. Under Design Principles, it states
"[p]rioritize actions that are in the City's control, recognizing that we can
urge others to join us, but leading by example is most effective. Align
incentives. Ensure that investment of public resources encourage what we
want and discourage what we don't want." We want clean energy. Let's
align our financial resources with that desire. All of our efforts in the Climate
Action Plan can be overshadowed by continuing to fund the fossil fuel infrastructure. Fortunately, it's a wise economic decision too. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Cedric de la Beaujardiere and then Ava
Lindstrom and David Page.
Cedric de la Beaujardiere: Hello, good evening, Council, Mayor. I also
support the Sustainability Implementation Plan before you today; though I do note, as Susan said, that there does not appear to be any consideration
of aligning our investment strategies with our social and environmental
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values. Such an effort should be added to the Plan. In support of that goal,
I also support you to direct Staff to divest all City investments from fossil
fuels. I hope you'll execute this action quickly and not tie it up in the
prolonged Palo Alto deliberation process. This is an easy step in support of
the City's sustainability and climate protection goals, and it is in line with the
City's fiscal, environmental, and social values. It's fiscally responsible, given
the likelihood of stranded assets for fossil fuels, where they have large
petroleum reserves which must not be burned if we're to avert climate
disaster. Environmentally, it's in the interest of the City due to our
susceptibility to drought and sea level rise and other climate impacts.
Socially, it makes sense given Palo Alto's commitment to community
engagement, which is a glaring contrast to the petroleum industry's
disregard for community and violence towards people who peacefully tried to
stop these actions from impacting their communities. There's been extreme cases of violence both here and in Dakota as well as in Canada's arboreal
forest, in the Amazon, in the Niger delta, just to name a few. I thank you
for your service and for doing the right thing, which I'm sure you will. Thank
you.
Mayor Scharff: Ava Lindstrom to be followed by David Page.
Ava Lindstrom: Hello everyone. I'm Ava Lindstrom, and I'm a Palo Alto
resident. I live right by the California Avenue (Cal. Ave.) Caltrain station.
Before we consider the good that we can do with these environmental
initiatives, it's appropriate that we look at the harms we are already engaged
in however inadvertently. Right now, Palo Alto has more than $5 million
banked with financial institutions that fund the fossil fuel industry including
the Dakota Access Pipeline and the extraction of tar sands. In fact, of the
six top United States (U.S.) banks that fund tar sands extraction, Palo Alto
has financial ties to four of those; therefore, I call on Mayor Scharff and the
Palo Alto City Council to divest all funds from and sever all financial ties to
any bank or institution that funds the fossil fuel industry. We have many,
many alternatives here in Palo Alto, and we are lucky to have so many
alternative, innovative institutions that don't require funding this dangerous
industry. We owe it to the young people of Palo Alto, to the victims of the California wildfires, and to the indigenous people on whose lands we stand.
Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. David Page to be followed by Stephen
Rosenblum.
David Page: Hello, again. I'm back. I was just complaining about the net metering. I appreciate the very rapid response by your Staff to explain the
nuances of the situation. I wanted to take a moment to complain a little bit
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more—I apologize—about the pollution and the emissions that are going into
the atmosphere. I see a lot of plans and goals, targets and processes and
strategies being outlined. I don't see enough infrastructure in Palo Alto,
solar panels, electric chargers, wind turbines, etc. Hopefully we're moving in
that direction. It's too small and too slow for the death and destruction
that's already happened. I wanted to finish, however, on a positive note.
There's good news that I learned today. The Mayor of San Francisco, Ed
Lee, announced for the first time that he supports divestment for the San
Francisco Employees Retirement System from fossil fuels. That's a big step
that he's taken. Hopefully, the pension board trustees are going to follow
through with that. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Stephen Rosenblum to be followed by Andrew Boone.
Stephen Rosenblum: Good evening, Council Members. I'm here also to talk
about the issue of divestment. I would strongly urge the Council to consider adding a divestment principle to the Sustainability Plan. I refer you to one
of the Guiding Principles, which is "recognize Palo Alto's role as a leader and
linkages with regional, national, and global community." Also from the SIP
Design Principles, "[p]rioritize actions that are in the City's control
recognizing that we can urge others to join us, but leading by example is
most effective." Also, "[a]lign incentives. Ensure that subsidies, if any, and
other investment of public resources encourage what we want and
discourage what we don't want." I strongly urge you to add a Design
Principle to the SIP that requires the City to invest its money in line with
these principles. We cannot solve climate change with local effort alone.
Ignoring Palo Alto's hundreds of millions of dollars of investments to
encourage the elimination of fossil fuels is not acceptable. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Andrew Boone to be followed by Melanie Liu.
Andrew Boone: Good evening. My name is Andrew Boone. I also agree
that if the City is serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, then we
cannot be investing our money in the extraction of fossil fuels elsewhere.
That's exactly the opposite of reducing the use of fossil fuels. Many other
jurisdictions are considering or have already divested from these polluting
fossil fuels. It's Palo Alto's responsibility to do so next. I also think there are other actions that you are taking or you have made decisions that
undermine the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions such as the
construction of two new car parking garages in Palo Alto at a total cost of
$57 million. Those were approved in April. It was a terrible decision.
You're trying to reduce the dependence on single occupancy vehicles for people coming into Downtown and coming in the Cal. Ave. business district,
but then you're encouraging people to drive into those areas by providing
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more parking. Those projects should be canceled, and that land should be
used to build housing for people. House people not cars. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Melanie Liu to be followed by Patty Region [sic].
Melanie Liu: Good evening, Council Members. I'm with the Alliance in
Solidarity with Standing Rock. We have about 200 Palo Alto residents who
have signed a petition asking the City to divest its money from financiers of
pipelines including most egregiously the Dakota Access Pipeline and the tar
sands pipelines. In addition to that, about 250 other individuals many of
whom work in this City or study in this City, worship in this City have also
signed the petition, which I'll be sending to you, the signatures. I believe
we need in this City a triple bottom line, a financial bottom line to go in
conjunction with the social and environmental bottom line. This will bring us
into harmony and have the left hand working together with the right. We
have about $14 million invested in the Tennessee Valley Authority. Since a petition was launched 3 years ago by residents here, led by Steve
Rosenblum, we have almost doubled our investments in Tennessee Valley
Authority. Our very capable finance staff are interested to be in alignment
with what the other departments are doing for climate change, but maybe
they need some assurances from City Council that it is okay to not be
invested in Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA that operates eight fossil fuel
plants including coal and 16 natural gas plants which is fracked gas. If we
sold our TVA investments today, the $14 million, we could sell for a $7,000
profit, the difference between the book value and the market value.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Patty Reagan [sic].
Patty Reger: I'm saying she (inaudible) my minutes.
Mayor Scharff: No, she can't. We don't do that. Sorry.
Ms. Reger: I'm Patty Reger, and I—first of all, I want to say thank you for
all the Staff and everybody doing the electric cars and stuff. I also want to
say I'm embarrassed about your behavior. Drinking out of bottled water
when we're talking about sustainability. All of you, you're role models.
Some of you are drinking out of bottled water. You're pouring it into your
glasses. That's one thing that you guys can do, be good role models.
Second of all, most of you have been looking at your iPads, walking out. At one point, four of you walked out and left when someone was speaking. I
think that's the least thing you can do to prove—I'm very embarrassed
about your behavior, that you were doing that. You're not supposed to be
drinking bottled water during a—you have water and you have glasses. My
point tonight is we've met with some of you Council Members about sustainability and divesting in fossil fuels. You should take this a little bit
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seriously because the City of Santa Monica is doing it, Davis, Seattle. I'm
summing up. I'm just saying that I hope you take a little bit more
consideration in what our speakers are talking about and your actions.
Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: David Coale to be followed by Jeralyn Moran.
David Coale: Hello, Mayor, City Council, and Staff. I'm here to support the
updated SIP program. We need to move forward judiciously and very
quickly on this as we have seen climate change actually moves faster than
most governments can in terms of addressing it. I hope you approve this
right away. I would like to echo the comments made by Andrew Boone in
that the parking garages are in direct conflict with everything that stands for
sustainability. This is where the general Comprehensive Plan and the SIP
are 180 degrees out of phase. During the discussion of the garages, there
was no discussion of sustainability. There was a parking consultant hired, which was great. You got a parking solution. What we need to do is—with
the money saved on those garages, which we can't afford anyway, we could
fully fund the TMA, the SIP, and all the bike-ped projects and have money
left over or, as Andrew Boone suggested, we should build affordable
housing. It may sound innovative to redesign the garages for reuse, but this
is a terrible waste of money. The garages won't be realized. Your reuse will
only be more expensive in the end. Please, reconsider these garages. I
know it's difficult to revisit an issue that's already been passed, but it might
be very difficult to explain to our neighbors, our Sister Cities, and everything
else why we can't execute the SIP because we're building millions of dollars
of parking garages. Thank you very much.
Mayor Scharff: Jeralyn Moran to be followed by Bret Andersen.
Jeralyn Moran: Good evening. I'll try to be very brief. My name's Jeralyn
Moran. I'm a resident here in Palo Alto. I applaud all the work and
everyone that has worked really hard on the Implementation Plan and the
associated S/CAP. I feel a responsibility to bring up one specific item and
one more overreaching item. Number one, I'm very concerned that—as two
pf my fellow community members have already spoken of, the parking
garages that are still in the works are a big problem for me. It's conflicting with what we're trying to do. I'm very concerned, and I know it will be
difficult to turn around. It's worth it. We are a model for so many other
communities. We just can't be building parking for single occupancy
vehicles potentially and still be able to look in the face of everyone who's
looking at us for guidance into this future where we have climate change staring at us right now. There just isn't time for this. We can use that
money for much, much more sustainable things. The second, really quick, is
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climate change, as you know, is here and it's now. Divestment by the City is
imperative for the same reasons. People are looking to us as a model.
There's a time urgency here for both of these things I'm talking about. I
applaud you as a City guide. I implore you to follow up with divestment.
Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Bret Andersen to be followed by Esther Nigenda.
Bret Andersen: Good evening, Honorable Council Members. Bret Andersen.
I'm speaking on behalf of Carbon Free Palo Alto. I'm going to read a late-
arriving memo that we sent to Council. Carbon Free Palo Alto welcomes the
Sustainability Implementation Plan. It's a large improvement over the last
version of the Plan. We find it much leaner, more focused, and easy to
comprehend. We look forward to seeing more specific details in the very
near future from Staff concerning key actions and their impact and
comparisons on the scale of those actions in each of them. We're hopeful that the progress of climate mitigation will accelerate in the City. For the
last 4 years, we've seen pretty tepid progress on eliminating our local
emissions from fossil fuel use despite the fact that we have a very
aggressive goal, 80 percent reduction by 2030, and we have a community
that has a pretty large appetite for solutions in this area. We're hoping to
see a lot of breakthrough movement now that we have a SIP that's taking
form. Finally, regarding the challenge before us, I wanted to quote from Bill
McKibben, who is from 350.org and reminds us all that winning is losing
slowly when it comes to climate change. All the years that we delay, we are
making it more costly and more difficult to reduce in time to mitigate the
coming threat. Thank you for taking responsibility for our local emissions
and moving forward as fast as we can to reduce our carbon footprint in Palo
Alto. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Esther Nigenda.
Esther Nigenda: Good evening, Council Members and members of the
public. I'm thrilled that our City is addressing sustainability and would like
to see the water-energy nexus explicitly included. In California, 20 percent
of our energy is used in the water sector. This energy is used in pumping,
transporting, purifying, and distributing the water. Save Palo Alto's Groundwater believes that if we use best practices for construction
dewatering, not only will we save water but we will reduce our energy
consumption and, thus, contribute to reducing our greenhouse gases. It fits
right in with the Sustainability Plan and with its goals of reducing
consumption of potable water, protecting our sources of which groundwater is one, and ensuring adequate supply. I had some slides, but with the 2-
minute limit I'm going to skip it. Thank you.
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Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we return to Council for questions,
comments, motions, etc. We're a little behind time. We've still got to get to
the second item. Hopefully we can do this in an hour. Council Member
Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: Thank you very much to Staff and also for every
member of the public who came to speak and to share their views with us.
This is an incredibly important item. I just have a couple of questions. In
the Staff Report—actually in Attachment A, Packet Page 224, Page 3 of 10 of
Attachment A, the second paragraph talks about financing strategies.
Mayor Scharff: Cory, where are you again?
Council Member Wolbach: It's Packet Page 224, Attachment 15A. There's a
list of remaining S/CAP areas to come forward in the future. One of them is
financing strategies. The second paragraph, there's a list of items separated
by semicolons, of items that would come forward, I guess, in the future. One of them is financing strategies. There's been a lot of discussion over
the last year including this evening about divestment from fossil fuels. I was
wondering if that might be covered by that item.
Mr. Friend: It could be. It wasn't in the prior draft that you folks saw in
June. That was mostly addressing how do we pay for the activities that are
specified in the S/CAP and the SIP, but that could be a place where that item
could be addressed. It certainly ties in with the language that you folks
have already approved about ensuring that our investments are inline with
our values and aspirations. That would be a place perhaps to take that up.
Council Member Wolbach: What kind of timeline would you envision that
moving forward currently?
Mr. Friend: Currently, we're focused on these four areas in response to your
request in June that we narrow. I think we want to get those secure and
then, as we move into planning for the next year, we'll decide which of these
we can start to take up. Some of these efforts are already underway in
existing work plans, so those will proceed. To the extent that they're new
and require resourcing, we'll bring them back to you for discussion.
Certainly in a case like this where there's a policy implication, we'll want to
support a discussion for Council on that.
Council Member Wolbach: I'd like to make a Motion.
Mayor Scharff: Go ahead.
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Council Member Wolbach: I'd like to move the Staff recommendation with
one change—one addition rather. It would be Part C, which would be to
direct Staff to return to Council in early 2018 for discussion of divestment
from fossil fuels.
Mayor Scharff: Second.
MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to:
A. Accept the revised 2018-2020 Sustainability Implementation Plan
(SIP) "Key Actions" as a summary of the City’s work program under
the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP) Framework for the
years 2018-2020; and
B. Find this action exempt from environmental review under California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines Section 15061(b)(3);
and
C. Direct Staff to return to Council early 2018 with a discussion of divestment from fossil fuels.
Council Member Wolbach: To speak to the Motion, first I'll just tackle the
fossil fuel one that I just added first and then talk about the general SIP. I'll
try to keep it pretty brief because I know we are running behind. I
appreciate the Mayor reminding us of that. As I mentioned, a lot of us have
been talking about divestment for many months, some even years. We've
had a great number of residents and other people who are affiliated with the
City calling for this. Other cities in California and the Country have divested
from fossil fuels. I do know that it won't be an easy thing for our financial
Staff to do. It will be complex, which is why I can't in good conscience and
respect for our Staff direct tonight that we just do the divestment because
they're going to make sure it happens. It is time to move that conversation
forward. We've had some informal conversations over the last year, but it's
time for formal Council direction to Staff to really move this conversation
forward, to figure out exactly what the challenges would be, and what the
timeline would be to have a full divestment of our financial interests from all
fossil fuels. I really want to just extend my gratitude to everybody in the
community not only who came out tonight or have signed petitions but have
made their voices heard over the many months and even years about this issue. You have been heard. On the SIP in general, as a couple of members
of the public or several have pointed out, this is a much cleaner, simpler,
focused document. Aside from the one addition that I've suggested, this
really does focus us in some good directions. A couple of things I want to
point out that are really important and we'll explore in greater detail over time. On Packet Page 228 and 231, it talks about protecting creeks. If I
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remember correctly, that's in our Comprehensive Plan as well. That's really
important. I look forward to more discussion about what protecting our
creeks will look like. On the question of parking structures that was raised, I
don't want to add it into this Motion at this time, but the issue of where we
make our investments, the issue of what that means when our
Infrastructure Plan is already way over budget, and whether we ought to
revisit perhaps scaling back at least one of our parking structures or doing
something that would make it less environmentally impactful and less
expensive, such as not going two floors below ground but maybe just going
even only one floor below ground. At least those modest modifications, if
it's not too late to have those conversations, might be part of the
conversations we have when Staff brings back to us discussions about our
Infrastructure Plan and our challenges about paying for them. I'm not going
to add that to the Motion now. (Crosstalk.)
James Keene, City Manager: If I just might—a quick comment. We'll be
back at the end of January before the Council on the Infrastructure Plan
funding issues, etc.
Council Member Wolbach: That's why I'm not adding it here. On the
question of EVs, I just wanted to ask Staff what must we do and what we
can do on the Council and what can the community do to help support
making sure that our electrical infrastructure in Palo Alto as part of a larger
grid, that locally our utility is prepared for massive growth in EV adoption,
and making sure that in peak demand times we don't have any problems
with supplying and sustaining EV charging throughout the City as adoption
rates hopefully skyrocket. I don't know if Staff wants to weigh in on that at
all or have any comments they want to share about how we will prepare our
electrical grid in Palo Alto for EVs.
Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager: I call to your attention for the Council a
couple of ongoing efforts. First, perhaps no surprise but we are planning for
it.
Council Member Wolbach: That's what I wanted to hear.
Mr. Shikada: The work is well underway. Jonathan Abendschein's group has
been working on what we're referring to as our Distributed Energy Resources (DER) plan, distributed energy resource plan, which encompasses solar, EVs,
storage, and the kinds of investments that individual residents, property
owners, are making both into their properties as well as community as a
whole. There are both customer-side implications of that as well as system,
utility-side components of that. That work, again, is well under way. We're in discussions with the Utility Advisory Commission (UAC) on the specifics of
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that including our next steps related to community outreach to get some
reality check, so to speak, on the barriers and priorities that our community
is seeing and use that as the basis for what we will come back to the Council
with as a follow-on to our strategic plan within the Utilities Department. If I
missed any of that or if they'd like to expand, Staff is more than welcome to
do so.
Council Member Wolbach: That answered my questions, so don't feel
obligated. I feel confident that we're focused on that issue and addressing
that concern proactively. I also just want to call out Mobility Item 7. It talks
about housing strategies. In our Colleagues' Memo about looking more
carefully and being more creative with our housing zoning in order to
address some of the cost issues around housing, this issue of maybe
decoupling parking from housing units, which would potentially reduce the
cost of a housing unit by $60,000 or so, is something that's already going to be coming forward in the new year. I'm glad to see that overlap between
sustainability and also our affordability issues. A lot of these things do
overlap. A lot of these do cut across multiple issues. If we can find
solutions that do work, it could have multiple positive impacts. One other
thing I just want to mention about electric vehicles is I do really want to
encourage us to keep thinking about electric bicycles and skateboards,
electric scooters, and electric motorcycles and thinking about how the
charging works for each of those, where can people charge an electric
scooter, skateboard, bicycle, or motorcycle as those become more adopted
over time. With that, I'll end my comments. Thank you very much. I think
we're really headed in the right direction.
Mayor Scharff: I'm going to speak to my second. First of all, I want to
thank Gil for his hard work on this. I know Gil has worked really hard on
this, and I want to say it's a good job. It hits the nail on the head mostly. I
think we should recognize you for your hard work.
Mr. Friend: Mayor Scharff, thank you very much for that. Thank you, folks,
but I really want to extend that thank you to the Staff team that has worked
on this. This has been a group effort of multiple departments and, as I said,
a couple dozen people with many, many cycles of trying to find the right balance and consensus and engagement so that this really becomes a Plan
of the entire City organization, not just the Sustainability Office. Thank you.
I'll accept the thanks on behalf of that team.
Mayor Scharff: I did have some questions, and some of them are in the
weeds and some are not. I'm going to start with my weedy question. One of the things that strikes me is that we should be trying to reduce any
methane sources in Palo Alto, given that methane is 17 times—you probably
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know it better—than carbon. Is there a place to address that? Is that
something we should put in here? Is it so de minimus that it's irrelevant? I
just really wanted to raise that question. If there's stuff rotting, it's
producing methane or if there are City things that produce methane, I'm just
really concerned about it.
Mr. Friend: Let me take a first answer, and then maybe some folks from
Utilities and Public Works would supplement this. I understand there are
two primary sources of methane in our community. One is natural gas,
natural gas leakage if you will, and the other is decaying organic matter in
landfill. We're addressing the landfill matters as we've talked about many
times before. The electrification strategy is one of the ways of reducing our
dependence on natural gas and, thus, the possibility of leakage from that.
We recognize that part of the footprint of natural gas includes the lifecycle
impacts, leakage in the entire supply chain from wellhead to our use, which is why natural gas is a serious concern. Those are the two primary
measures, as I understand it, that we're undertaking to deal with that.
Anybody want to add to that from Utilities or Public Works or is that …
Phil Bobel, Assistant Director of Public Works: Just to reassure you that
we're doing everything that state of the art and technology allows us to do
to try to prevent what we call fugitive emissions of methane from the old
129-acre landfill, we have an extensive system of pipes underground that
you don't see when you go to our new, fancy Byxbee Park. There is an
extensive collection system under there, and it's shuttled over to the
Regional Water Quality Control Plant where we use that methane gas. Now,
in the process of extracting that and getting it to the Regional Water Quality
Control Plant, there are losses in that pipeline system just like there are
losses in our own distribution system as Gil alluded to. Those are the two
main sources, and we spend an awful lot of time and energy making sure all
of those distribution systems are state of the art. There are losses there.
They pale by comparison with respect to the CO2 from transportation.
Mayor Scharff: Phil, while I have you up here, I thought I could just ask
some questions about methane. I know it's a little off topic. Those bins we
have; I think they're the green bins where we recycle things. I've noticed a lot of people leave their stuff in there for a long time because they haven't
filled up before having it. I noticed it starts to rot. I was wondering if that
was a source of methane. I don't know if it is. I was noticing that people do
a lot of composting, that there are piles of leaves sent to rot. They get wet.
We have lots of cows grazing on the fields. I was curious if any of this stuff is an issue.
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Mr. Bobel: We wanted to talk to you about those cows that you have out
back, Greg. When you get to the agricultural area, it's definitely a major
source. Emissions from the 10,000 head lots in the Central Valley are an
important source. In Palo Alto, I don't have a numeric for you on the
decaying matter in our green bins. My sense is it would be very, very small,
again, compared to CO2 from transportation. I have to be honest; we don't
have a numeric I could give you on that.
Mayor Scharff: Now, for my specific question. If we could go to Page 7 of
10, which is Packet Page 228. This is a 2-year SIP. You're going to …
Mr. Friend: Three year, '18, '19, '20.
Mayor Scharff: '18, '19, '20, and you're going to come back to us in 3 years.
Mr. Friend: Yes.
Mayor Scharff: This seems a little nitpicky. It struck me under goals that
the goal should be—are we not planning on changing the goals? Do the
goals last all the way or are we going to come back and look at—are these
short-term goals or long-term goals?
Mr. Friend: These are going to last all the way. They may modify a bit as
we go both as we accomplish things and learn from the initial programs, but
those goals are oriented to the overall trajectory through 2030.
Mayor Scharff: That's helpful because, otherwise, I was going to say if this
is a 3-year goal, mitigating the impacts of natural gas through carbon offsets
in the short term and electrification in the mid to long-term wouldn't make
sense as a short-term goal. We expect these goals to stay the same
throughout that?
Mr. Friend: Yes.
Mayor Scharff: One of the things you did—I appreciate the little gray box at
the bottom that talks about –how'd you put it? I thought it was really good
actually. It says followed by electrification by water heating, space cooling,
clothes drying, and cooking where practical and cost effective. I appreciated
that. I actually thought we should put in the goals, because that reflects
what we're looking at, which is mitigate the impacts of natural gas through
carbon offsets in the short term and electrification—I think we should say
where practical and cost effective. I think cost is an issue here. That's what the plan was.
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Mr. Friend: It's a fair point, Mayor Scharff. Our assumption has been that
those criteria apply to everything in the Plan. Rather than specify that for
each Action Item, our assumption is that everything here has to meet the
test of practicality and cost-effectiveness or it doesn't fly.
Mayor Scharff: Where does it say that, an overarching thing? Maybe I
missed it. I would just like to see it somewhere in the Plan. When someone
looks at this between now and 2030, when someone says, "This is our goal,"
someone else says, "That would cost so much money it's not practical."
Mr. Friend: I'm certain it's in the S/CAP. I think it's in the SIP, but I don't
know if I can find it fast while we're flipping pages here.
Mayor Scharff: Why don't we continue talking, and maybe you could have
one of your Staff members or someone look for it and allay my fears on that
at some point? I did have a concern about that.
Mr. Friend: That is the very clear understanding of all of us, that those …
Mayor Scharff: Does Phil know where it is?
Mr. Bobel: I don't. I just wanted to remind Council that, as Gil correctly
stated—let's say you're in the water area where there are three goals.
Those three goals we expect to be goals; although, you could modify them
the next time you see this in 2020. We expect those three goals to continue
on to the end of the Plan. I did remind you that you have almost a year ago
approved a framework, a document we call the framework. It contained
goals. In some of these areas, that number of goals was larger than this
number of goals. Why? Because this is just a 3-year Implementation Plan.
We picked out those goals that primarily related to this 3-year period. Just
so you didn't catch us on this in the future, Greg, you have approved a
larger set of goals for that longer time period as well. You did that when you
approved the framework.
Mayor Scharff: I appreciate that. Another little nitpicky thing under
mobility. One of our key actions is use parking management strategies
including dynamic pricing to support transportation and sustainability goals.
Our Motion on that was that we were going to explore that, and you were
going to come back to Council with that stuff. We haven't made the decision
to use parking management strategies; we probably will end up there. Now, is not the time to make that decision since the last Council action on that
was actually to explore it. I think we should instead say explore using
parking management strategies. I just want to make sure that's okay with
the maker of the Motion.
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Mr. Friend: That was our intention there. You see that we've got that
verbiage for most of the items. I think we just missed it on that one.
Mayor Scharff: You do. I think it was just a typo.
Mr. Friend: I think it's an oversight. Yes, we'll put that in.
Council Member Wolbach: Does that need to go in the Motion?
Mayor Scharff: Yes.
Council Member Wolbach: Why don't you suggest the Amendment?
Mayor Scharff: The Amendment is simply to add "explore using parking
management strategies" as opposed to "use."
Council Member Wolbach: That's fine with me. I just want to make sure we
capture it properly.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “replace in Mobility Key
Action 5, ‘use’ with ‘explore.’” (New Part D)
Mayor Scharff: On electric vehicles, I'm thinking about what actually will
make this happen. I realize you have a value (inaudible) to expand and be
(inaudible) on private property including rebates and financing options, etc.
The one thing that would do it is basically forcing multifamily housing, be it
condominiums or apartments, to put some charging in for residents. I don't
know how we do that, but that's actually what's going to be the problem. If
you want to buy it—everything else we do—we own an EV. I'd say 99
percent of the time I just charge it at night at my house if you own a single-
family house. If you're living in an apartment and there's no charger there,
that's when it's a hassle. That's the real impediment. I know we dance
around a lot of it in the key actions.
Mr. Friend: I think we address it specifically in the Key Actions Number 2
and 3. To your point, the guiding strategy on this is that multifamily
housing and workplace charging are the priorities. That's where we think
the big leverage is. We currently require EV readiness in new construction.
The thought here is to explore requiring EV readiness in existing structures
with multifamily housing being one of the priorities there for the reasons
that you said.
Mayor Scharff: That's really what I wanted to say. It just says existing buildings. I wanted to focus it really on multifamily housing. I wanted to
know that that would at some point come back to us and that's what Staff
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was planning on. On water, which is on Packet Page 231, this might be a
little bit hard to get across. The important thing with water is to use it
efficiently, not necessarily just to reduce consumption. I wanted you to
think about it like this. Our canopy, for instance, is really important to us.
What's really important is that we water those trees in an efficient manner
that doesn't waste water. I would not want us, for instance, to say we are
going to reduce the consumption of water and stress those trees. Yeah,
they'll survive, and maybe their lifespan will be shortened, but we can
reduce the consumption. What I'm really trying to say is in those areas of
the City where we are using water efficiently, we should not be reducing or
pushing people to reduce consumption. What we should be doing is pushing
everyone to use water efficiently. The argument, you might say, is we
might end up with climate change in an area of prolonged drought. I would
say, at the very least, that may force us, for instance, to clean our water at the wastewater treatment plant so that it becomes potable. At that point,
you're using that water, and that water should be used efficiently. What we
shouldn't think of doing is reducing water beyond where we are using it
efficiently unless we are in a drought situation. If that happens, we should
come up with new supplies. The goal of reduced water consumption should
be use water efficiently. I guess I could live with reduce potable
consumption, if you thought that was better. I really wanted to capture …
Mr. Friend: That's certainly the intent there. As Karla Dailey talked about,
matching water quality with the needs of water use is one of the ways that
we get at that, to move away from using potable water for uses that don't
require that level of water quality. That starts to get at what you're raising
here.
Mayor Scharff: It does. That's why I was concerned about it. I'm really
concerned about the goal there because it's too simplistic to just say reduce
water consumption. I didn't want to suggest something off the top of my
head. I could suggest "use water efficiently." I was looking really for a
suggestion from Staff of how to capture that concern I have.
Mr. Friend: You offered one possible suggestion, which would be to say
"reduce potable water consumption." That might be one way at that. Would you want to offer any other approaches to that?
Ms. Dailey: I'm not sure just calling out potable water gets to what you're
talking about exactly.
Mayor Scharff: It is use water efficiently, right?
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Ms. Dailey: Yeah, I think it is. I don't want to wordsmith it at the podium.
I hear what you're saying. Certainly, the intent was never to starve trees of
water or any other (crosstalk).
Mayor Scharff: I couldn't think of (crosstalk) just trees.
Mr. Friend: Which is why we added the third goal here of protecting canopy,
creeks, groundwater, and the Bay, to make that explicitly a concern. We
maybe don't have the language quite right.
Mayor Scharff: On the key actions …
Mr. Bobel: Could I just add something on that, Greg?
Mayor Scharff: Sure.
Mr. Bobel: The way we're reviewing these goals is that they're not
independent. You have to read them all. Gil just pointed out the third one.
You'd reduce consumption, but you'd do it in such a way that you don't
violate our third goal there, which is to protect the canopy.
Mayor Scharff: I'm using the canopy as an example. I could probably come
up with other examples of where people are efficiently using water.
Reducing consumption will damage something or some value that we hold.
That's the concern. It's hard to just say that's—the question is what is the
goal here. Is the goal just to reduce water consumption or is it to use water
efficiently? I believe it should be use water efficiently. I would move that
we change the goal to "use water efficiently."
Council Member Wolbach: You're talking about the first goal on Page 10 of
10, Packet Page 231?
Mayor Scharff: Yes.
Council Member Wolbach: I don't think it needs to be changed. I would be
more open to a change like "reduce inefficient water consumption."
Mayor Scharff: I'm fine with that, if that's the goal.
Council Member Wolbach: I'm looking to Staff. If instead of the one
proposed by the Mayor, if we added the word "inefficient" between "reduce"
and "water," so it'd say "reduce inefficient water consumption," would that
undermine the goal that's envisioned here? I'm looking to Staff for any
confirmation verbally.
Mayor Scharff: I'm fine with it. I think that captures it.
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Council Member Wolbach: I just wanted to be very careful because I know a
lot of time was spent thinking about these.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “add to Water Goals,
‘inefficient’ between ‘reduce’ and ‘water.’” (New Part E)
Mr. Friend: Add the word "inefficient," not the word "potable"?
Council Member Wolbach: Right.
Mayor Scharff: It's "reduce inefficient water consumption."
Mayor Scharff: I'm going to move on to someone else now. If we could just
get back to where the cost effective is somewhere in this, whenever you find
it.
Mr. Keene: If we don't have it, why don't you just tell us to put it in? We'll
find a place. How's that?
Mayor Scharff: I was just going to tell them to put it in there somewhere. The language would be that Staff add the concept of—the language is not—
I'm (inaudible) any language. It is "where practical and cost effective,"
which was … I'm not on any page. I'm just copying their language from the
bottom of Page 7 of 10. Staff said this is inherent throughout.
Mr. Keene: I don't know if it's where—could we more correctly say "as
practically and cost-effective as possible"? There may be a situation where
we could have a debate about it, but you think the return on investment is
still worthwhile.
Mayor Scharff: That's fine. I think that concept needs to be in here.
Mr. Friend: In the S/CAP, one thing I found is that this is talking about a
portfolio of measures that show net positive financial benefit. That's one
way to cost effectiveness. The specific language you're asking for is here
somewhere. I'm still looking for it.
Mayor Scharff: The Motion would be to put that in there the way you stated
it, if it's not already in there.
Council Member Wolbach: We can just say "ensure that the S/CAP includes
the concept." They may not need to add it if it's there. We just need to
ensure it includes this concept.
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INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to ensure the
Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP) includes the concept of where
practical and cost effective.” (New Part F)
Mayor Scharff: That finishes my concerns. Vice Mayor Kniss.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Let me go back to the EVs, which we had a discussion on
with Cory. Way back in August, you had a discussion at the Utilities
meeting. At the bottom of page—which you probably don't have in front of
you. There's a question from Council Member Filseth asking what keeps
people in Palo Alto from buying electric vehicles. You have gone through
this tonight and said that actually we rank very high, if not the highest, in
the Bay Area with electric vehicles at 3 or 4 percent. Correct? That's what
your figures say.
Mr. Friend: Yeah, about 2,500 vehicles currently, we think.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Who's our EV person? Is that you, Ed? That was a really
good question. It says Staff would be exploring that through a survey. An
example of something he believed was a significant barrier was the difficulty
of residents in condos or apartments to install charging infrastructure in
multifamily housing, which is what Greg just addressed but said we need to
make that something easier to install or in some way expedite that. Talk
about that in terms of what you discussed with EVs tonight. A penetration of
3 or 4 percent doesn't sound very high.
Ms. Rupert: I guess I'm not understanding your question. Are you wanting
to know more about the infrastructure plans for multiunit dwellings or are
you asking …
Vice Mayor Kniss: Yes, that's just what this addresses.
Ms. Rupert: We do know that one of the barriers to entry in the area is the
lack of EV chargers in multiunit dwellings. For homeowners, it's very easy
for folks to purchase EVs and just plug in at home. It gives them a sense of
comfort. There's not a lot of range anxiety. In a multiunit dwelling, where
there aren't EV chargers, folks are a bit hesitant to purchase EVs simply
because they don't have that comfort of being able to charge at home
overnight. Part of what we need to do is explore getting the infrastructure. I do like this idea of determining how to potentially require that, getting that
infrastructure into the multiunit dwellings.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Under strategic moves, which you have on Page 9 of 10,
it says to build out public and private infrastructure to support, and so on.
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What was your plan for doing that? This talks about 4,000-6,000 EVs by
2020.
Ms. Rupert: It's looking at the permitting process. It's determining how to
contact the owners of the property. It really gets into the weeds on how to
build this out.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Give me just an example of one way that you would go
about doing that. Here comes Peter to your rescue. It's very easy for us to
say what we really need are more charging stations in apartments, condos,
whatever that may be. I want to know what is our pathway to that.
Peter Pirnejad, Development Services Director: Peter Pirnejad, Development
Services Director. Maybe I can shed some light. The Council in their
wisdom 3 years ago, 4 years ago—Mayor Scharff was Mayor previously—
instituted a focus on how to turn the tide on new buildings. We went
through a comprehensive stakeholder engagement effort over a period of about 6 months. First, we looked at single-family homes, and then we
broadened our perspective and looked at all homes. By 2014, the Council
approved that all new construction, whether it be single-family, multifamily,
etc., be plumbed to remove barriers and become future-proof for electric
vehicles. What we've talked about since then, if the Council recalls, is re-
engaging that stakeholder engagement effort after the Council has given us
direction to do so and explore ways to trigger upgrades in existing buildings.
Now, existing buildings are a little harder because you've got existing
infrastructure. We realized through our cost-effectiveness analysis that
that's the biggest lift, trying to get the infrastructure in those buildings, the
panels, the conduit, etc., to Code to be able to install these things. What
we're going to be doing, hopefully with the Council's direction, is reinstitute
those panel of experts in the electric charging space, in the construction
space, property managers, contractors, etc., to see what potential triggers
we can impose as part of the Building Code cycle or even in advance of when
the Building Code comes for renewal to require that those properties
upgrade when they hit a proper and appropriate permit, for example an
electric upgrade.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Primarily, we're talking about retrofitting because …
Mr. Pirnejad: Retrofitting of course.
Vice Mayor Kniss: … we have built very little in the last 2-3 years. Even
though we had that requirement, we have any number of buildings in the
City that would have to be retrofitted. You're going to bring a group back
together again, talk about ways you could expedite that, hopefully keep the price down and so forth.
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Mr. Pirnejad: Correct. We'd look at ways where it logically makes sense to
be cost effective, to be as little lift as possible for these existing apartments.
We wouldn't want to displace anybody or cause any kind of financial
hardship. We'd want to make it appropriate when they're doing appropriate
types of upgrades.
Vice Mayor Kniss: It's a big lift, I think.
Mr. Pirnejad: It's going to get bigger every time we try to push the
envelope.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I think so. Did you want to add to it?
Jonathan Abendschein, Utilities Resource Manager: Jonathan Abendschein,
Assistant Director of Resource Management. I'll just follow onto what Peter
was saying. In addition to this reconvening and looking for triggers to
mandate retrofits, we also have a voluntary program that we've launched to
facilitate Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) installation in existing multifamily dwellings through rebates. We're, in fact, working with Palo Alto
Housing Corporation (Housing Corp.) right now.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Pause there a minute. Say rebates again.
Mr. Abendschein: Rebates.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I think that's an important motivator. It wasn't that
you're mispronouncing it.
Mr. Abendschein: I was just curious what you were emphasizing about it,
whether that was an important piece or maybe not going far enough.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Rebates are a sales thing.
Mr. Abendschein: That was the piece I was curious about. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I think what we're really saying is in order to up the
number of EVs that are out there, to reduce that range anxiety and so forth,
you really do need more chargers that are easily available. I don't know
how many we have right now in the City, but it's clear that we could
probably use twice as many.
Mr. Abendschein: Yes. That's something we're going to have to investigate
and also dig in a little bit more to see exactly what the barriers are. We're
working on a survey right now to our customers that's going to maybe shed
a little bit more light on exactly what those barriers are.
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Vice Mayor Kniss: These Minutes mention that, which is really good. I
appreciate all that feedback.
Mr. Shikada: If I might add one other dimension, Vice Mayor. This isn't all
on the City. The private sector is also heavily engaged. No surprise that
Tesla with the rollout of the Model 3 has been in conversation with us as well
as communities throughout the Bay Area on rollout of additional
superchargers. They're interested in, whether it be leasing properties from
whomever—it would be the appropriate landowner—in order to place
additional superchargers in urban areas so that it's very convenient for a 90-
minute visit when someone's having a cup of coffee or shopping or what
have you. Clearly, very active in that area and will be more so. We also
just became aware of a program that ChargePoint is undertaking, that's
specifically focused on multifamily developments where they are offering to
make direct contact with the landlord themselves in order to make it easier for a tenant to make the case and for a landlord to say yes to putting in
infrastructure. Clearly the private sector has a significant role if not larger
than the City's.
Mr. Friend: Third-party opportunities are one of the things we're going to
investigate both because of the expertise they bring. It's their money, not
our money. It let's them take the responsibility of assessing the market risk
and how fast things move, which is more their expertise than ours. To
summarize on the question you asked, I think there are three major
measures that we have to work with here. One is mandates where they can
be justified, as Peter talked about. Second is incentives and rebates, as you
talked about. Third is education, which we often forget but has a lot of
leverage here. This is something that Hillary talked about in relation to the
ride-and-drive events. Just giving people contact with this technology
changes their sense of what's possible or appropriate for them. We have
focused that on rides in vehicles for individual purchasers, but there may be
an analogous education effort for owners of multifamily buildings so they can
see what their opportunities are, what the benefits are for them, what
programs we have to help them to build that population of infrastructure.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Why don't we just start our survey tonight? How many people in here have an electric vehicle? That's fewer than I would have
guessed, by far. How many of you would have an electric vehicle if it was
easier to charge it? That improves it a little. I am actually surprised.
Seeing the number of Priuses and Teslas in town, it looked there actually are
more. Thank you all.
Mr. Shikada: A fertile field for our work.
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Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. I'm going to continue a little
bit on this discussion. On the Implementation Plan, what I liked a lot was
it's much more focused and specific than the last time around, and it's
focused and specific on the highest impact areas. Nicely done. Here's what
I hope can be in the next phase. I still can't tell from this, of all these
programs and goals and strategic moves and so forth, how many tons of CO2
equivalent it's going to reduce—that's important—and some idea how much
these things are going to cost. The whole discussion of cost-effectiveness—
if one program costs that much per ton, and another program costs that
much per ton, then we're going to prioritize appropriately. As we get into
Implementation Plan, that kind of stuff becomes very relevant. Is this going
to get us to 80/30? I can't tell from this. Metrics and measurement and
how we track where we are and so forth is a key part of implementation. Again, on the next phase, in rev 1.1 of this, I hope we'll see some more of
that. I will say, back to the discussion of EVs, one example is we want to
drive local ownership of 4,000-6,000 EVs by 2020. I thought that was great.
It's measurable. It's specific. We can see how close we're getting there. If
there were a lot more stuff like that in here, that would be a big step
forward in the next rev of this. The whole discussion about EVs in multiunits
makes a lot of sense to me. If you start looking at this, there are 27,000
housing units in Palo Alto. We've got 1,000 EVs roughly in Palo Alto. I
assume most of them are like mine, which is you charge them at your place
of residence. If you've got a single-family home, that's one thing. If you're
in an apartment building, it's something completely different. That means
there are 26,000 housing units that don't have an EV. Even if we got all the
new construction to be EV-ready, that's still 26,000 housing units that don't
have an EV, that we're going to have to go get. Your focus on retrofitting is
going to be important. That's the kind of stuff that, as we get into metrics,
measurements, plans on how to get there, we'll get. For example, another
bullet here is expand EV deployment in the City fleet. We have several
dozen passenger vehicles in the City fleet. How much is it going to cost to
buy EVs for the City fleet versus how much are we going to expend going after the 26,000 housing units that don't have an EV? That's the kind of
stuff we want to be able to figure out. As we get further into the
implementation, I hope the next rev is earlier than 2020. That'll be
important. Nice step forward. Looking forward to seeing the next one.
Mr. Friend: Thank you for those comments. Let me respond briefly to a couple of them. On the first matter of tons and costs, in the S/CAP itself we
did extensive modeling projections of what those impacts of different
strategies would be. We pulled out summaries of that in your Attachment E,
I believe, in tonight's Packet, that gives you the high-level perspective on
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Page 57 of 98 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/11/17
that. That's some of how we prioritized based on scale of impact and cost
effectiveness. We have not recalibrated that for the specific actions in this
Plan. We wanted to wait for you to direct us to move forward on this Plan,
and then some of the work we do will be that practicality and cost-
effectiveness analysis for specific measures.
Council Member Filseth: For me, please so move. Thank you.
Mr. Friend: To be clear, some of them are going to be hard to say. We can't
exactly—we don't control the rate of EV adoption. We can't predict it
exactly. We can encourage it and support it where we have leverage, for
example, by expanding charging infrastructure. The market's going to move
at its own speed. We're projecting 4,000-6,000 units by 2020. I heard off
the record last week—I hope to have an on-the-record source soon—that we
may see those numbers by the end of next year. We're challenged here in
how we keep up with the pace of a rapid change in the transportation system of this Country.
Council Member Filseth: I understand the difficulty. Again, if we're going to
commit to achieving 80/30 and if we're going to move forward with
implementation, we've got to face that challenge. We've got to be able to
be prescriptive here.
Mr. Friend: The point you made of looking at what's the most effective way
to deploy our resources and our money to get the best result is exactly what
we need to look at in this next piece of work, at a very specific, granular
level. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: Thank you. I appreciate the amendments that
have been made to the Motion very much and appreciate that we're moving
forward in a way that is more focused. Thank you for returning with this
organized in that fashion. Just a couple of things. Given that one of the
goals under water, Packet Page 231 and Page 10 of 10 in the Report, does
include protect canopy, creeks, groundwater, and the Bay—thank you very
much—why under one of the key actions would it not include the Dewatering
Ordinance? Because it's in the works; it's made progress? Why would we
not include that as one of the key actions?
Mr. Friend: Because it's in the works. Because there are substantial other
efforts on it. Because it was a moving target that we couldn't nail down in
this Plan.
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Council Member Holman: You're not trying to nail down exactly what it
would do. There has been a lot of study that shows what it would do it. I
guess I'm not clear still why it couldn't be included as one of the Action
Items here. It is in the works. A lot of—thank you, Phil.
Mr. Bobel: All I did was get up. Phil Bobel again. With all these things, it's
kind of a judgment. The last document we brought to you had many more
key actions. It did include that. We had to make some choices here about
the things that were most important to meet this goal. Remember that the
dewatering thing—there's still a debate among people as to exactly what the
effect is of reducing that water, pumping from the groundwater. Will it
support the goal of allowing us to use it for some other purpose? In the
nearer term, probably not. Is it a good idea to leave it in the ground? Yes.
We had to ask ourselves what are the really key Action Items that we can
say actually moves us to one of these goals. It wasn't brought forward to this level; although, it is something we're working on. It was in a longer
version of this that we had originally.
Council Member Holman: Thank you for that. I guess the short answer is
that because there's still some debate on what the impacts are and aren't
and the impacts are and aren't, that's why it's not on this list.
Mr. Friend: Also as Phil said, we were trying to focus this to a short, key,
salient list of what needs to happen in response to your request last time.
This is not all that's being done. There are other efforts underway in the
City, but the focus of the SIP seemed—it seemed to us that these are the
critical elements to move us toward those goals. I'll just say this has been
one of our challenges throughout, finding the right balance, right amount of
breadth, right amount of depth, right amount of detail, right amount of
comprehensivity, right amount of focus.
Mr. Keene: If I might jump in, if it's okay both to respond to Council
Member Holman's comment and also Council Member Filseth's earlier
comment. This SIP is to guide us in '18, '19, and '20. It also anticipates the
fact that we may need to specifically come back to Council for further
approval for programmatic direction within this implementation period of the
3 years. It would make common sense that, when we would do that sort of thing, to the extent possible we would bring cost-benefit information in this
timeframe to the Council to say, "We think we ought to do this. To go in this
particular direction, we may need programmatic approval or resource
approval. Here's why. Here's what we think it can get us." If you look at
the chart we have in the presentation, Slide Number 3 in your Packet, the '18-'20 SIP does in an overall sense anticipate a potential reduction of 54
percent greenhouse gas reduction in this period. A lot of that is due to the
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fact if we want to count what we would get in gas credits for essentially
buying offsets during that period. We will over that time frame, to the
extent that we're able to swap out real improvements to gas, for example
for gas credits, start to be able to report. This is not something that we're
going to do in 2018, and we're not going to be collecting new data until 2020
and just doing a final report. I think that's important. Along the same lines
about where we are, there could be an evaluation a year or 18 months from
now in our thinking on dewatering and what we know about that. We would
also be in a position to be monitoring that and, if need be, report to the
Council. I would ask that you think about what you're doing with the SIP,
approving a direction for us over the next 3 years. We may go a little bit
this way and that way, but it'll be perfectly appropriate at certain times for
us to be reporting to you along the way. It may sometimes be a
comprehensive report; sometimes it may just be within a specific program area to say we know a lot more about what dewatering will do now. It
happens to be 2019, and we're not waiting until the end of 2020.
Council Member Holman: You well anticipated my next question. Given this
is a 3-year program that's outlined here, you will be coming back to the
Council, I would hope, at least on an annual basis to report out an update.
We have that understanding.
Mr. Keene: I would say programmatically—let's just say dewatering because
that's going to be back in a different forum than just reporting on the SIP.
It may be very well appropriate that we're able to draw some interconnects
between what we were thinking on the SIP and where we are 3 months from
now or 6 months from now or a year from now on dewatering, more than we
can even right now. As Gil also said, we actually have other measures and
reports that are not included in here. They're sort of intentionally excluded
at this point for focus, to have clarity about what we want to ensure we
really deliver on over this 3-year period.
Council Member Holman: Thank you for that. I just don't want to
disappoint Gil. That's one of my main missions here tonight. I just don't
want to disappoint Gil. The other question that I had was about something
that we have. We have things at play. Some things have already been put in place. The other one that I'm going to ask about, which has to do with
I'm not going to disappoint Gil, is about Construction & Demolition (C&D).
David Coale mentioned direct conflict. I appreciate a lot of the work that's
included in the energy portion of this. There is so much both in terms of
energy and—I'm not going to repeat what you've heard me preach about 15 times—about energy, creating the demand for energy, and in addition to
that the recycling energy we use because we don't salvage. We have a C&D
Ordinance that has a salvage aspect to it, but we don't utilize it. It is on
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rare occasion. I just a couple of weeks ago mentioned something.
Somebody I know owned a house on Churchill. The house turned 100 last
year. Because a friend of mine was looking to buy it—I knew the people
anyway—I was all over the house. There wasn't a crack anywhere. It was
not salvaged; it was scraped. That to me is—I'll put it up there with sins.
The environmental impact and the lack of reuse of materials and salvage is
just really—I think it's devastating. I hate as a City that we just turn a blind
eye to that. Here you are again, Phil.
Mr. Bobel: Here I am again.
Mr. Friend: Let me just say first, Council Member Holman, that we see eye
to eye on that one. I think it's an important concern. Zero waste and a
circular economy was one of the ten thematic focuses of the earlier version.
We focused down to four. The zero waste, municipal operations, community
behavior, finance, regeneration, and the natural environment are all places where the Staff still has efforts underway and will continue to, including the
C&D concern. It's just not in the focus on these four primary levers that
we've come back to you with tonight. It does not mean that we don't think
they're important. It certainly doesn't mean we're not going to pursue
them.
Council Member Holman: I don't want to take much time. Like I said, I
didn't want to disappoint you because I always bring it up. Again, because
we have an Ordinance that talks about salvage, it seems like it's a natural to
include it here. Phil.
Mr. Bobel: let me just assure you that we have heard you and others.
We've started a new effort just several months ago to look at not only C&D
but what we're now calling construction waste. There's a certain amount of
waste generated by knocking stuff down. There's another amount generated
by the active constructing. They're both areas where we can see dramatic
improvement. In fact, we just looked at our waste characterization, where
is our biggest contribution to the landfill coming from. At first, it was food
waste. We've been working on that for the last 3 years. Just in the last
several months, we've said Council Member Holman was right. The next big
thing that we've got to look at is both C&D and construction waste. They are different. Combined together, they're right up there with food waste in
what is making up the bulk now of the stuff that we send to landfill. I've
personally been visiting the sites recently with our team that takes this
stuff—it's either Zanker or it's the SMaRT Station or it's a landfill directly—
and trying to figure out what is a way forward where we can get somebody to get much more recycling done and how can we augment our current
Ordinance so that we get what you refer to as salvage done. I think the way
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we augment our current Ordinance and the thing that we're seriously
considering—we have an internal work group working on this within the City
now—is to require not only that this inventory be done, which is what we
currently require for the big sites, but that there be a period of time where it
has to be advertised that this exists, and let people come through and look
at it and see what they can salvage. That adds to the time, but it doesn't
have to if people plan ahead, that are planning either deconstruction or
demolition. They just have to plan ahead, and they have to build this time
period in. We think that's a good way to let others look at it, not just have
them do their own inventory. Secondly, we can augment the inventory with
the next logical step, which is—you've inventoried it, so what of that stuff
that's on your inventory do you think we can really salvage? Let's take a
look at that. We have to have more resources to do that. We're trying to
figure out how to do that in the short term with the funds in the refuse fund. Long term, that would have to become another fee on the developer. We
can at least seed it and start it with our refuse funding. I just wanted to let
you know that in the next 12 months you're going to see a revised
Ordinance to that Chapter 5 where the C&D stuff exists. I just wanted to
assure you that, on a different Page from this, we are really heating up our
efforts on both construction and demolition and salvage.
Council Member Holman: I'm very happy to hear the words salvage and
recycling used in the same sentence and not just everything lumped under
recycling. I appreciate that very much. I think that ends my comments.
Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: Looks like we have a lot of people here for the
History Museum, so I'll try to go quickly. I did find this much more focused.
I really like the format with the goals and the KPIs and the Action Items. On
the energy plan, if we had a focus on improving the energy efficiency of
some of our affordable housing we could get a double benefit in that energy
costs are a larger percent of income for those folks. I think your Goal 6
achieves that. There's a lot simpler language in this Report but maybe not
in this one. Is that what's meant by commissioning, recommissioning to ensure efficient post-occupancy building operations? Would that be things
like looking at our existing affordable housing stock and making it more
energy efficient?
Mr. Shikada: That's in an existing program and well underway among our
multifamily development.
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Mr. Abendschein: Jonathan Abendschein. It's one of the other goals. I'd
have to take a look back at the goals. It's one of the goals that references
efficiency. That definitely includes a focus on low-income customers. We
actually have not only State mandates but also programs that we want to
focus on around low-income customers. That includes both multifamily and
single-family dwelling units. It's called our Residential Energy Assistance
Program, and it allows low-income customers to get a variety of free
efficiency upgrades.
Council Member DuBois: Programs for the owners of the buildings to do
larger overhauls?
Mr. Abendschein: The programs are for those—I'd have to look at exactly
how that's implemented, but the programs are for low-income customers,
and many of those are renters.
Mr. Shikada: We've been working specifically with Palo Alto Housing Corp.
Council Member DuBois: On mobility, again, maybe it's just shorthand. We
have "fund the TMA." I hope that's not interpreted as just funding from the
General Fund but really just looking for sources of funding the TMA.
Mr. Friend: It doesn't make a distinction here about where the sources are.
It could be General Fund; it could be parking revenues; it could be various
other sources. I think that's something for us to do some work on, propose
to you, and you to decide.
Council Member DuBois: I just think the General Fund is not sustainable.
The other question I had about this was really the way we state the goal
about making it more convenient not to drive. This idea about mobility by
making it harder to get around is not a great message. Maybe there's a way
we could more positively word this goal to be something like ensure that our
transit services are highly utilized rather than make it more convenient not
to drive. I'm looking on Packet Page 229.
Mr. Friend: Council Member, with respect, it doesn't say make it more
difficult to drive, which as you know is a strategy that some
environmentalists have proposed as a way to reduce vehicle use and
congestion. We're not taking that approach. We're saying let's do it with a
carrot, not a stick. Let's make it more convenient not to drive. Let's provide people with alternatives that are more attractive and more convenient.
Council Member DuBois: We already have the goal of reducing single
occupancy drivers. If we do have people driving with four or five people in a
vehicle, that seems fine. It really seems a second goal is about being sure
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our mass transit is fully utilized. I just think it's a more positive way to word
it.
Mr. Friend: It's not just mass transit; it's new mobility services, walkability,
bikeability. It's lots of different ways not to drive. This came out of the first
organizing meeting of the TMA. We had 50 people talking over the course of
a couple of hours about what they wanted. It struck me and I said at the
end of the meeting, "I think you're all saying the same thing. In the dozens
of different things you're saying, you're wanting it to be more convenient."
No matter how much you want to be a non-SOV driver or you want to be
environmentally responsible, if it's not convenient, you're not going to do it.
The convenience for individuals, whether they are workers with multiple jobs
or families with kids in daycare or soccer coaches or what have you, if we
can't provide systems that make it more convenient for people not to have
to drive themselves, we don't get there. That's the reason behind that.
Council Member DuBois: I hear what you're saying. I just think it's …
Mr. Friend: There are specific elements that need to be there. I completely
agree with you. We thought that would be a useful overarching frame to
guide all the specifics.
Council Member DuBois: I hear what you're saying about making it
convenient. I still think getting rid of the negative in the goal would come
across a little—just the way you read it. We had a lot of discussion about
electric vehicles. The thing that really jumped out at me was there is no KPI
for charging stations. It just seemed like we're talking about it quite a bit.
When I look at other cities around the Bay, I feel like we are falling behind a
little bit on our charging stations. It doesn't have to be at home as people
have pointed out. People can charge at work or at public stations. I wanted
to suggest—I just wondered if that had been discussed as a Key Performan
Measure (KPI). I was going to suggest maybe adding it. Just getting people
to buy cars without having the infrastructure to charge obviously doesn't
work.
Mr. Friend: On the other hand, they're not going to buy cars if they don't
have the infrastructure there. We didn't discuss this in detail, your
suggestion. My thought would be that charging stations are an enabling KPI that gets you to the real goal of higher EV penetration. We don't want to
have too many of them.
Council Member DuBois: I'd like to see us track it though. I'd love to see
the metric of how many charging stations we have.
Mr. Friend: It's certainly something we have our eyes on and will track.
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Mr. Shikada: We have information on the public charging, not so much on
the private.
Council Member DuBois: Is Staff opposed to adding that as a KPI?
Mr. Shikada: Ultimately, the public chargers will hopefully be a small
fraction of the total chargers, and the majority will be on private property.
Again, until we have a separate rate structure for EV charging, it may be
difficult for us to collect that information. I just throw that out as a
somewhat limitation on our ability to track that effectively.
Council Member DuBois: Peter.
Mr. Pirnejad: Peter Pirnejad, Development Services Director. To the extent
that electric vehicle chargers obtain a permit for installation, we can track
those. What we can't track is if somebody is plugging their electric vehicle
into an outlet and using that as a charger.
Council Member DuBois: That's a very slow, trickle charge.
Mr. Pirnejad: You can plug it into a 210 outlet, which is like a Level 2. To
your point, we can track the permits, and we can do a delta between today
and 3 years from now.
Council Member DuBois: I guess I'll look to my Colleagues if they're
interested in adding that KPI. Nope. I've been pretty involved on the water
one, so I actually didn't have any comments or questions on that one. I did
have a question about "A" in here. I just want to make sure I understand
this because of the way it was worded. This is the Implementation Plan; this
replaces the document we saw in June. It was worded as a summary, and I
just wanted to make sure what we are passing is this as the Implementation
Plan.
Mr. Friend: This is the Implementation Plan. I refer to summary just
because beneath this there is a lot of detail of Staff work plans of the
different measures being taken to implement the things that you see here.
This summarizes all of those. This is complete in itself.
Council Member DuBois: By this (crosstalk) we're not passing the document
we saw in June.
Mr. Friend: This one.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you very much.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka.
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Council Member Tanaka: I just wanted to thank Staff for your work on this.
It looks much better. Great job. I wanted to also agree with Council
Member Filseth's point about metrics and trying to figure out what the return
on investment is and trying to maximize return on investment given the
scarce dollars and resources we have. I don't think that needs any
Amendment. I do have two quick ones. The first one is—I see on Packet
Page 228, on EGY1 …
Mr. Friend: I'm sorry, Council Member. Can you speak directly into the mic
because we can't quite here you.
Council Member Tanaka: Sorry. Packet Page 228, EGY1, continue to
purchase carbon offsets to match natural gas emissions, Packet Page 7 of
10. Last week, I think Council approved a measure to purchase carbon
offsets in Mexico. There were terrible forest fires in Sonoma, Napa.
Thousands of acres burned. We have raging forest fires down in Southern California, where millions of trees are going to be burned up. The idea of
carbon offsets is really good. Rather than shipping dollars to Mexico, what
we should do is do the carbon offsets locally. We should help invest them in,
let's say, Sonoma or Napa where our neighboring cities have lost everything
due to these terrible forest fires versus shipping them over to a foreign
country. What are your thoughts about that?
Mr. Friend: It's not just my thoughts, Council Member; it's your thoughts as
well. You authorized that specific offset purchase recently, but last year
Council authorized the approach of offsetting our natural gas emissions and
…
Council Member Tanaka: I'm not (crosstalk) our carbon offsets. My point is
if we're going to purchase carbon offsets, let's purchase them locally. Let's
help fellow Americans, fellow Californians versus foreign countries.
Mr. Friend: I agree. That in fact is the policy the Council adopted last year,
to prioritize local offsets where they are possible, where they're practical,
affordable, and meet the quality standards of carbon offsets. Staff is looking
for opportunities to do that. The one you suggest of local reforestation could
be something to take a look at.
Mr. Shikada: You should make a note, though, that we do follow the California Air Resources Board protocol and certification of the offsets. To
my knowledge—actually I haven't really been tracking this. In Staff
discussions, we're not aware at this point of certified projects being
established related to the fires. Certainly, at some point there very well may
be. I suspect it's just premature.
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Council Member Tanaka: You're saying that we'd only purchase carbon
offsets in foreign countries. Is that what you're saying?
Mr. Shikada: No. I'm saying that we only purchase certified carbon offsets
that meet the California Air Resources Board (CARB) certification protocol.
Ms. Dailey: I want to clarify that just a little bit. We actually don't purchase
CARB certified offsets because we are not buying them for compliance. This
is our own voluntary program. We do purchase offsets from projects that
fall under those approved project types by CARB, forestry being one of
them. This is a little aside from the SIP, I think, because the carbon neutral
program is approved by Council. The contract approved by Council last
week was just one method of implementing that program.
Council Member Tanaka: (Crosstalk) that proposal, it actually needed a
waiver because it wasn't compliant. Not only was it in a foreign country, but
it needed a waiver because it wasn't compliant in terms of a true carbon offset. It wasn't verified, I think. I forget the exact term.
Ms. Dailey: No, it didn't need a waiver. When the carbon neutral program
came to Council, it was just for U.S. projects. Because this was not a U.S.
project, we came to Council specifically to get Council's approval of that
project rather than just buying offsets under the umbrella of the approved
enabling agreements in the carbon neutral plan that was previously
approved by Council. My point being that the Oaxacan project is a forestry
project with a protocol very similar to that approved by CARB. It's about 10
percent of what we need to buy in the course of a year. It's a relatively
small amount.
Council Member Tanaka: I hear you but, when I see my fellow neighbors in
California lose their homes, millions of acres of forest being burned, it makes
me wonder why are we reforesting Mexico or a foreign country versus
reforesting California. To me, it should be a priority to do local first.
Mr. Friend: Council Member, within EGY1, the second sentence is to
evaluate potential local offset purchases. That was the intention last year in
the Council Resolution. It's the intention here. As Ed has pointed out,
reforestation in response to the recent fires is just premature. No one's
doing it yet. They're still digging out. If those opportunities arise, it's certainly something we would look at.
Council Member Tanaka: That's the kind of Amendment I'd like to make.
Rather than say "evaluate potential," it should be "evaluate and prioritize
local offset purchases."
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Mayor Scharff: Where are you?
Council Member Tanaka: Packet Page 228.
Council Member Wolbach: Just to point out real quick, the offsets were for
Oaxaca, a Sister City. It's not just a foreign country; it's a Sister City of Palo
Alto. As Staff pointed out, the evaluation of potential local offset purchases
is highlighted right there. I don't think the Amendment is necessary.
Mr. Friend: If I could add one thing there. With regard to prioritization, I
believe the language in Council's policy adoption of natural gas offsets last
year specifically said prioritize local offsets. I think the point you're making
is a good one. I think it's already established as City policy, if I'm not
mistaken.
Council Member Tanaka: It didn't seem to happen last week though. That's
my point.
Council Member Wolbach: I'm not going to accept the Amendment as friendly because it's already our policy. We can't just buy offsets if there
isn't a program to buy the offset yet. Maybe it's something we could do next
year or the year after with reforestation because of these horrible California
fires. They're not on the market yet, so we couldn't do it this week if I'm
understanding Staff correctly. It's not that they weren't interested; they
just couldn't. There's no program to buy Sonoma reforestation offsets that
you're aware of yet. Our existing policy would prioritize that.
Council Member Tanaka: I understand that. These are voluntary. We're
not doing it for some sort of compliance reason. We're doing it because
we're trying to be good citizens. If we're trying to be good citizens, paying
for more tree planting in Napa and Sonoma seems to be a wiser choice than
doing it in Mexico. I get your point.
Council Member Wolbach: We could do it next year.
AMENDMENT: Council Member Tanaka moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to add to the Motion, “replace in Energy Key Action 1, ‘potential’
with ‘and prioritize.’”
AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND
Council Member Tanaka: My second one has to do with Packet Page 229 on
MOB4. It's actually something that Council Member Wolbach was talking about earlier. Bikes are a large part of the solution but not the only part.
Electric skateboards, electric scooters, electric bikes, electric unicycles,
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there's a long list. There's a long list of last-mile solutions. MOB4 should be
enhanced to be more than just bike boulevards. It should be—I think the
term people use is—there are a lot of them that could be used. I think it
should extend beyond just bikes. I'd like to make a friendly Amendment
that we maybe change it from "bike boulevards" to "personal transportation
vehicles" or something to that effect, where it incorporates the bigger idea
that bikes are part of the solution but not the only solution.
Council Member Wolbach: I'm not going to accept this one because it
already does say redesign streets to support active and non-SOV modes of
travel. Those other modes, such as my motorcycle or your electric scooter
or electric bike, would all be covered there, I think.
Mayor Scharff: How about a single occupancy vehicle motorcycle?
Council Member Wolbach: That's a good question. Since we have a lot less
parking impact and traffic impact, I hope we're categorized a little bit lower. It's already pretty well covered by it, so I won't accept it as friendly.
Council Member Tanaka: That's fine. Thanks.
AMENDMENT: Council Member Tanaka moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to add to the Motion, “replace in Mobility Key Action 4, ‘bicycle
boulevard’ with ‘personal transportation vehicles.’”
AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou.
Council Member Kou: Most of the questions I had are already answered. I
did want to ask—we're asking for more robust EV charging stations in Palo
Alto. How are the regional efforts going? Obviously, we go out of town, and
we need the charging stations over there. Is there a coordination with all
the other cities? How robust are they?
Mr. Friend: As far as the level of other cities' efforts, I can't speak to that.
Perhaps somebody else can. With regard to coordination, the City Manager
has convened—I guess about 8 months ago now—a Managers' Mobility
Partnership that's a regular monthly meeting of the City Managers of
Redwood City, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and Mountain View as well as folks
from Stanford to look specifically at how we can coordinate and collaborate
around transportation strategies, recognizing that none of us by ourselves can solve the problem and the strategies we choose affect each other.
We're looking at ways to collaborate. There's been an initial focus on the
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bicycle networks and bike-sharing, and we'll be moving on to other issues as
well. I think that's the place where we're looking at how to do that.
Council Member Kou: I just want to make sure that, if we're pushing
towards electric vehicles, there is means for charging in other cities. I went
to San Francisco, and it was very difficult to find one. Until we have that
figured out also, I hope that conversation continues. Thank you. It's a lot
easier to figure out this time around. Also, I'm looking forward to a stronger
Groundwater Ordinance coming in the new year. Thank you.
MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member Wolbach moved,
seconded by Mayor Scharff to:
A. Accept the revised 2018-2020 Sustainability Implementation Plan
(SIP) "Key Actions" as a summary of the City’s work program under
the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP) Framework for the
years 2018-2020; and
B. Find this action exempt from environmental review under California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines Section 15061(b)(3);
and
C. Direct Staff to return to Council early 2018 with a discussion of
divestment from fossil fuels; and
D. Replace in Mobility Key Action 5, “use” with “explore;” and
E. Add to Water Goals, “inefficient” between “reduce” and “water;” and
F. Direct Staff to ensure the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan
(S/CAP) includes the concept of where practical and cost effective.
Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously.
Thank you very much, Gil.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent
16. Status Update and Discussion of the Roth Building Rehabilitation, 300
Homer Avenue; and Recommendation to Approve a One–year
Extension of the Option to Lease the Roth Building Between the City of
Palo Alto and the Palo Alto History Museum.
Mayor Scharff: Now, we're on to the History Museum Item. Do we have a
Staff Report?
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Hamid Ghaemmaghami, Real Estate Manager: Good evening, Mayor Scharff
and Council Members. I'm Hamid Ghaemmaghami, Real Property Manager.
Staff is recommending the Council approve a 1-year extension of the option
to lease for the Palo Alto Historical Museum for the Roth Building. For the
past 10 years, Palo Alto Historical Museum has been creating an historical
museum at the Roth Building by focusing on developing comprehensive
rehabilitation plan and seismic plan and embarking on a marketing plan to
reach out to community and potential donors to raise the needed funds. It
has been a challenging process, but they've been making some progress.
The additional time that basically they are requesting will allow the Museum
to continue its fundraising efforts to reach $9.2 million to complete the
seismic and rehab and to jump start this project. Basically, this concludes
my report. The Palo Alto Museum folks are here to make a brief
presentation. We are available for questions. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Do we have any public speakers? You have a presentation
you wanted to give.
Rich Green, Palo Alto History Museum Board of Directors President: Yes, I
have a short presentation.
Mayor Scharff: Let's go ahead and do the presentation. It's Rich Green,
right?
Mr. Green: Yes. Mayor Scharff and City Council Members, thank you very
much for having us here tonight. My name is Rich Green. I'm the President
of the Board of Directors of the Palo Alto History Museum. With me tonight
is Laura Bajuk, our Director. We're both longtime residents of Palo Alto.
Also in the audience is Tim Stitt of Vance Brown Construction, the firm that
knows Birge Clark buildings best and has a proven track record of coming in
on time and on budget. Ambrose Wong is also here from Garavaglia
Architects. They have been the architect of record since the beginning of
the project. Also with us, we have a few of the 600-plus supporters of the
Museum project including several of our Board Members and Advisory Board
Members. Would you all please stand be recognized? Everyone supporting
the Palo Alto History Museum please stand. I thank you for staying until this
late hour. These are passionate, dedicated people helping this worthy project forward. We're here tonight to update you on our campaign to
create Palo Alto's first History Museum for the people of Palo Alto and to
request a 1-year extension on our lease option. Why a History Museum?
Why is this important? Why is it so important to the people in this room?
There are many reasons. When I moved here in 1991, I was shocked that there was no History Museum that I could go to get myself grounded. What I
learned was we're an extraordinary community, one of a kind in the world.
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Museums build community. It's a place for people to gather, to get
grounded in where they are and how important their contribution to the
community can be. We're here to preserve an historic treasure, the Roth
Building at 300 Homer Avenue on the corner of Homer and Bryant. We are
the stewards of the collections, and we have growing collections. They're in
storage facilities around the area. The Museum is a civic hub. It's a place
for people to come together that have conversations inspired by the history
that surrounds them. They have conversations to explore explanation,
illumination. It's an education. It's the center for education. Third and
fourth graders will use this facility regularly. It's a place for people to come
to do research. It's a place to honor the contributions of the great Palo
Altans. This goes right back to Juana Briones and the Stanfords and
forward. It's a place to capture oral histories, video histories. Our oral
histories department will be extremely busy. It's a place to permanently store and protect our City archives, which are currently residing at
Cubberley. We are here to build a museum that will inspire the future for
continued innovation. This all started with a public-private partnership. It
started in the year 2000. For some of you who may not know the whole
history here, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation moved out, and much of that
area was torn down. Some people saw the value of what we call the Roth
Building, named after Dr. Roth one of the founding doctors of the Palo Alto
Medical Foundation. As part of the successful South of Forest Area (SOFA),
which is the South of Forest Area Coordinated Area Plan, agreement in 2000,
the City saved the historic Roth Building for public use, developed the 2-acre
Heritage Park site, and added high-density housing. An Request for Proposal
(RFP) process generated one proposal. That proposal came from PAHA, the
Palo Alto Historical Association. Palo Alto Historical Association (PAHA) then
spun off a different Board of Directors called the Palo Alto History Museum.
That was to raise money to open the Museum. Two years later, the Palo
Alto History Museum formed as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to raise funds and
develop and operate the History Museum. Fundraising began in 2005 when
Council approved the original 30-year lease option agreement, where we
would rent the Museum from the City—this is a City-owned building—for $1 a year. It took 4 years, but we received national Historic Register status for
the Roth Building. This opened up funding doors for us, making it eligible for
the Transfer Development Rights (TDR) program, for example, the transfer
of development rights, and County and national grants. Fast forward to
today. Rehabilitation plans are nearly complete and meet City requirements. We were at the Architectural Review Board (ARB) just last Thursday. We are
on the verge of applying for the final building permits. We're ready. We
want the Museum open in time for the City's 125th anniversary—I love this
word—the quasquicentennial. The Palo Alto History Museum will be the hub,
the focus of that celebration year in the year 2019. That's ambitious. We've
got a lot of work to do to get doors open on that Museum by the year 2019,
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and we will do it. We have a great team. Most of the Board Members are
here tonight. You see their names and pictures there. These Board
Members include a variety of community members from third generation
Palo Altans to relative newcomers, retired and current professionals from
many walks of life. Our professional staff have nearly 4 decades of museum
experience between them. We have a project manager who is here tonight,
Kitzi Tanner. When I asked Kitzi if she would help us as a project manager
on the construction side, she goes, "Hell yeah. My father was the first
orthopedic surgeon in that building. I grew up in that building. I'm there
with you 100 percent." Thank you, Kitzi. We have an Advisory Board.
There are some stellar names on that list, if you look at it. This is the who's
who of Palo Alto. Some of these names go back quite a few years. These
people are dedicated to our purpose. They help us every day. It's a strong
Advisory Board. They further our connection to the many corners of this large and diverse community. Their advice, connections, and support are
critical. We thank all of our volunteers for their service. A community
treasure, the Roth Building, 1932, is derelict right now. It is boarded up; it
is an eyesore. We need to change that soon. It is stabilized. Thank you
very much to the City for stabilizing it. It's not flooding anymore in the
basement. We've invested close to $700,000 in the architectural plans over
many years. Those plans are now fully compliant with City requirements
and are complete. With a few minor adjustments, we're ready for permits.
We are shovel ready, as we like to say. If you look at that picture, the back
of the building is what you see from Heritage Park. There's going to be a
little café area for tables and so on the back, so that the moms and dads
who are playing with their kids in that play lot have a place to get a cup of
coffee. The community rooms are right behind there. Those are public
access community rooms that would encourage the History Museum to be
that civic hub. Up on the second floor, over the community rooms, is the
permanent home of the City archives. This is going to be a media and
archive research center headed by City Historian, sitting behind me, Steve
Staiger. You'll notice there's a little door over to the right. It looks like
somebody's walking in. That is a bathroom. That is going to be the first bathroom available to the kids, the moms, and the dads playing in that play
lot. Right now, they have no bathroom. We are paying for that bathroom,
and we will maintain it appropriately. It's a very important part of our
project. This is a world-class design. What will the Museum look like?
Imagine, if you will, a view of the interior of the building. We had a very generous gift from the Peery Foundation last year that helped us start to
develop the exhibit and gallery concepts. We put out an RFP; we selected
Donald Civic, The Civic Group, and Bright Line up in San Francisco. They
have generated some gorgeous renderings of what is going to happen inside
this History Museum. What do those galleries look like? Who will they
serve. We debuted those renderings last fall at the MacArthur Park event,
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where we basically sold the place out for the History Museum event. It was
a donor appreciation event. Donors were very enthusiastic by what they
saw, and new gifts were received. There will be a video wall. The Museum
will be modern; it will be new; it will be dynamic. It's always changing,
always growing. We're going to be using a lot of new technology including
augmented reality, virtual reality, and so on, which both were invented here
in Palo Alto. The Learning Center will be mostly for the third and fourth
graders. It's also a place for research. The Learning Center is extremely
important to us because one of the fundamental purposes of a History
Museum is education for the community. With help from Professor Michael
Shanks, Stanford professor, founding faculty of the Hasso Plattner Institute
of Design at Stanford University aka the d.school, we are applying design
thinking to this Museum. Design thinking was invented here in Palo Alto
thanks to David Kelly, IDEO, a Palo Alto design firm, Professor Shanks, the d.school. We're applying the resources of the d.school to what the future of
a museum could be. Palo Alto will take a leadership role in redefining what a
History Museum can be for a community. I attended Professor Shanks'
workshop at Stanford University last week on this topic. It was fascinating.
Much more to come. How much will it cost? This is probably the most
important slide in the presentation. We have a $20 million campaign.
Mayor Scharff: How much longer do you have?
Mr. Green: About 3 minutes. It's a $20 million campaign. Costs have gone
up, as you can imagine. The costs of rehabilitating the City-owned Roth
Building, originally estimated at $5.5 million, is now up to $9.2 million. I
checked with Tim Stitt last week, the contract with Vance Brown
Construction is current, and that is a real number. It is a not-to-exceed
number, $9.2 million. We have raised $5.7 million toward that goal. We
have a gap of $3.5 million; we need to close that gap aggressively and
quickly. We've also raised over $2 million toward the actual build-out of the
Museum, which is exhibits, galleries, and programs. To date, we've raised
over $9 million. We did this with community support from over 600 donors.
We thank them for that. How do we bridge the gap? We do it with
intelligence, experience, passion, and commitment. We have an aggressive development campaign that is addressing one-on-one meetings with people
of financial capacity. We're also reaching out to the community. We have
started our Museum Friends program, which is an annual contribution from
$100 to $10,000. That is going extremely well, headed by our Board
Member Doug Kreitz. We've identified new strategies for businesses founded and based in Palo Alto, inviting them to collaborate with the
Museum to tell their fascinating origin stories. That project is being
spearheaded by Kevin Curry, also here tonight. We are pursuing capital
grants including a $305,000 capital grant from the County Historical
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Heritage Commission to repair the clay tile roof. We are getting support
from Supervisor Simitian on this. This is an extremely large request and
requires extraordinary support. Thank you to Joe Simitian and his staff.
Our programs have been standing room only. We did an amazing program
on the 50-year anniversary at Cubberley. We packed the auditorium there.
We also packed the conference room at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation
with Ben Maser, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Palo Alto Medical
Foundation (PAMF), and his father Dick Maser, who passed away this year
sadly. We've given ourselves a hard deadline, the quasquicentennial, the
year 2019, Palo Alto celebrates 125 years. We will do this in partnership
with the Palo Alto Historical Association and many other associations within
the City. We would love for this building to be the focal point of that
celebration. So many things have happened here in Palo Alto. This History
Museum needs to happen to celebrate from Jane and Leland Stanford to Jerry Garcia to Jeremy Linn to Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, the list goes
on. We have so much to be proud of here. Palo Alto from its inception has
impacted the world. Let's go ahead and inspire the future. We hope this
update on the Museum's progress will be useful as you lead our community
to the future. Some of you, probably all of you, recognize this extraordinary
person right here. There she is sitting in red. This is Beth Bunnenberg
standing in the doorway of the Roth building. Please join Beth Bunnenberg
and the Museum Board of Directors to rehabilitate this fabulous historic
building and transform it into Palo Alto's first History Museum. Thank you
very much.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we have a number of public speakers.
Laura, you asked to go last. I'm happy to honor that if you want to go …
Laura Bajuk: Whatever you like.
Mayor Scharff: It doesn't matter to me. You want to speak first or would
you like to wait to the end?
Ms. Bajuk: (Inaudible) I'm happy to go now since I've already (inaudible).
Mayor Scharff: Go on.
Ms. Bajuk: Thank you. My name is Laura Bajuk. I am an 18-year resident
of Palo Alto. I'm a former director in Los Altos and Los Gatos beforehand with the History Museum. I have two letters of support I wanted to be sure
to read into the record. One from Annette Fazzino. Her husband, Gary, was
Mayor here some years ago. Dear Mayor Scharff and Honorable Members of
the City Council, I am writing today to let you know how important the Palo
Alto History Museum is to me and my family. My late husband, Gary, was passionate about preserving and sharing the history of our unique
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community. It was his dream that the Museum would become a reality and
a place to celebrate all that is great about Palo Alto. Because it was Gary's
dream, it is now my dream and that of our children. Our community is truly
special. Palo Alto is the birthplace of Silicon Valley, and it's a star on the
world stage. So many have come to our community to learn, to work, and
to live. Do these new folks know about our past and the many people how
have lived here, who laid the foundations to make our present day a reality?
Our history is rich and needs to be shared with the community, visitors, and
future generations. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "We are not makers of
history; we are made by history." We modern Palo Altans are beneficiaries
of all of those who came before. I urge you to support the Palo Alto History
Museum. Let's show our community its beginning and how we came to
today and the possibilities of continued greatness. Thank you for your
consideration and your efforts to share our history with everyone. Annette Fazzino. From Supervisor Joe Simitian, I've known him for a while. To Palo
Alto City Council Members, I'm writing to express my support for the new
Palo Alto History Museum. Palo Alto has a rich history and culture to be
chronicled and shared in the first official History Museum. It's important for
each new generation of Palo Altans to learn about the place they live and
why it is the way it is, but without a physical History Museum it's hard to
imagine that happening. The History Museum can deepen our sense of place
and help us chart our future. The History Museum promises to provide the
community with interactive learning opportunities and enrichment for all
ages. It promises to be a place where we can celebrate local
accomplishments and inventions and seek inspiration to create the next
ones. I urge the City of Palo Alto to grant the Museum every consideration
and to do what you can to ensure the Museum's success. Sincerely, S.
Joseph Simitian, County Supervisor District 5. Thank you. They can say it
better than I can.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. Kimberley Wong to be followed by
Marilyn Bauriedel.
Kimberley Wong: Hello. My name is Kimberley Wong. My grandfather,
Samming Mah [phonetic], came to Palo Alto in 1905, cooked in the Stanford dorms, and co-owned the City Café on University Avenue back in the early
days of Palo Alto. I love sharing my stories of my grandfather's and my
mom's humble beginnings here and am proud of my deep roots. In doing
so, I have met many others who are interested in hearing them and who
also have amazing stories to tell. When I travel to different places, I also enjoy visiting local museums to learn about the inhabitants where I really
sense the heart and the soul of the town. The Palo Alto History Museum
should be an integral part of Palo Alto and should be granted the 1-year
lease option extension on the Roth Building. This will give them time to
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fundraise for their project. The Roth Building is the most fitting place to
house this Museum as it is a significant part of Palo Alto's history. Please
extend their lease so that we can have this building to proudly showcase the
rich history that has shaped the City of Palo Alto into the center of
innovation and culture that it is today. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Marilyn Bauriedel to be followed by John Erving.
Marilyn Bauriedel: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I'm
Marilyn Bauriedel. I live on South Court, and I've been a resident of the City
for 48 years. I have a special interest in this Agenda Item because I'm an
Advisory Board Member of the Palo Alto History Museum, and I have a
background of fairly extensive volunteer work in Palo Alto and historic
preservation including 6 years on the Palo Alto-Stanford Heritage Board. I'm
just speaking for myself and not in my official capacity of any sort for the
Advisory Board. Huge amounts of work have been accomplished by many volunteers for the History Museum over the past decade. The fundraising
efforts have been extensive but, as you know, there's still a ways to go to
finance the renovation of the Roth Building. Many other accomplishments in
the background, which Rich talked about quite a bit, have been made by
dedicated volunteers and staff to create the infrastructure for a top quality
and, as Rich said, world class History Museum. Hours and hours of planning
have taken place for the Museum's design of exhibition space and the
content of initial and subsequent exhibitions. Although the fundraising for
renovation is not complete, it is quite in keeping with the history of other
fine cultural and educational institutions like the Art Center and the Junior
Museum, which took quite a number of years and which were experiencing
the same issue to reach the financing goal for renovation of the magnitude
of the History Museum. I urge you without reservation to extend the lease
option for the next year on the road to ensuring the success of the Palo Alto
History Museum. I also wanted to mention that—it was mentioned in one of
the slides—we have qualified for TDR money. I believe there is some
leftover money in a bank of TDR money that wasn't used for another
wonderful historic building renovation recently, which was the College
Terrace Library. I would urge that the City should find a way to contribute that to this project because people have done a lot of work to qualify for the
TDRs. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. John Erving to be followed by Jean Libby.
John Erving: Hello. Thank you. I'm somewhat conflicted given that as a
young person, probably 5 years old, I was a patient at the clinic with my pediatrician. Dr. Esther Clark gave me penicillin there for various maladies.
I have a good news/bad news feeling about the clinic. On a serious note,
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this is an important opportunity for the community to acknowledge that this
is an institution that needs to be preserved. The history that the clinic has
in this community and the opportunity for it to endure is very important. I
hope that the Council will extend the arrangement. It's very important that
you do this. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jean Libby to be followed by Larry Klein.
Jean Libby: Hello. My name is Jean Libby, and I'm a public historian. I've
lived in Palo Alto for 53 years. I'm here to honor Ralph Libby, who was a
reference librarian for the City of Palo Alto for 35 years. When he passed
away 5 years ago, Steve Staiger was speaking at his memorial and had the
idea that we might have a gallery at the proposed Palo Alto History Museum
to honor the mentorship and public service/community service of Ralph
Libby. I am here in honor of that. thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Larry Klein to be followed by Rita Vrhel.
Larry Klein: Mr. Mayor and members of the Council, Larry Klein, 50-year
resident of Palo Alto. I'm here to speak in a very different way, both
supportive and critically of the effort to create a Palo Alto History Museum.
When I chaired the Palo Alto centennial back in 1994, I certainly became
aware of lots of interesting historical stories about our community that ought
to be preserved and a lot more has occurred in the ensuing 23 years. Much
of what, almost all of what you heard tonight is why we should have a
History Museum. I totally agree with that. The question isn't that. The
question is where's the money going to come from. We've been hearing
that the money was right around the corner for a long time. I first heard it
about a year after I came back on the Council in 2006. We were soon
thereafter asked for an extension for money to fix the basement. Since that
time, the Council and City Manager, depending on who had the authority,
have been asked for a number of different extensions primarily to raise the
money. The money has not been raised. It's very clear it has not been
raised. The numbers that Rich Green tossed around are a little different
than those in the City Staff Report, and I have no idea which are right. My
remarks depended on what the City Staff has. According to that, the History
Museum people have raised $5.7 million, but $3.9 million of that $5.7 million is the money from the City, a $1 million contribution plus the sale of
Transfer of Development Rights. That means they've raised $1.8 million
over 10 years, $180,000 a year. At that rate, it'll take about 75 years more
to raise the necessary money. I think we have to be candid and say the
History Museum has not been successful in raising the money and change is necessary. It's not going to happen in 1 year. I think that's unrealistic, and
you'll be back here at the same time, same place discussing another
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extension. The Council should give them a greater period of time, a really
realistic period of time, to raise not just the remaining portion for the
rehabilitation but the money necessary for the Museum itself. We have to
recognize also that people have different skills. This is not personal at all.
Some people are good at one thing; other people are good at fundraising.
My experience is that there are very few people who are good at fundraising.
We need to find them and get them on the Historic Museum's Board if this is
going to occur. I've taken the liberty of drafting a proposal for you. The
numbers are probably a little off now. I hope you'll consider the idea of
giving them a 3-year extension subject to various benchmarks that I've
outlined there so that we don't have a repeat of this. It's very good that we
really need a History Museum. The City has really stepped up so far,
contributing a little over $4 million now. The issue is whether there are
other contributors, donors in the community, who are also willing to step up. If there are, great. They'd be making a great contribution to our City. If
there aren't, then the City needs to reclaim the property. It's a valuable
piece of property. We just can't have it sitting there forever. It's been 17
years now. It's time for us to make some decisions over the next 3 years or
so. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Rita Vrhel.
Rita Vrhel: That's hard to follow. I'm going to give some money. I have my
envelope now, and I'm going to give some money. I really do encourage
other people to give money. At least the 1-year extension makes sense.
The idea of a 3-year extension is very exciting. I was here last week. I
think the Junior Museum took 15 years. Not to compare history with
peacocks, but it does take time to raise money. Everybody knows now that
the time is not unlimited, so maybe other people like myself, who have been
sitting by the sidelines and not becoming involved, will take this opportunity
to become involved. I urge you very strongly to give the History Museum
the opportunity to make it happen. Palo Alto has an incredibly rich history.
We are the center of Silicon Valley if not of the universe. We do need a
History Museum. I'm actually very excited about the presentation tonight.
Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Terry Holzemer, our last speaker.
Terry Holzemer: Dear Council Members, I'd like to encourage the Council
specifically to renew the 1-year lease option on the historic Roth Building,
which is meant to preserve the City's very important events that have
happened here. It's an extremely valuable asset worth preserving and protecting. If it takes 5 years, 10 years, it's still worth preserving. The Palo
Alto History Museum plans to redevelop this site into really a museum for
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the community. It's not just strictly old history. It's a history that will live
for 10, 20, even 100 years. I'm a school teacher, and I look forward to
having my children and the children of Palo Alto come to that History
Museum and not only learn about the past but learn how they can learn from
the past to make a better future. I encourage you, no matter how long it
takes, to build this Museum. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we come back to Council. Vice Mayor
Kniss.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I appreciate—Rich, you did a good job tonight, Rich
Green and Laura as well. You've got a wonderful supporting cast here
tonight, which is very exciting. Congratulations to all of you for your
service, for your commitment, and the excitement around this. I am going
to make a Motion that would approve the extension of the option to lease
the Roth Building between the City of Palo Alto and the Palo Alto History Museum for approximately a year, November 30, 2018.
Council Member Kou: Second.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks, Lydia. Also direct the Staff to simultaneously
develop options for a Request for Proposal for leasing the building to another
organization, returning to Council. The "but" in here is that at least 50
percent of the funds needed for Phase 1—we probably need a discussion
about that. I have put in "as indicated in the Budget Table, Phase 1 on
Packet Page 249;" that's what I'm going by—which would be $1.75 million.
I'll ask you in a minute about it all. I'm not sure that that's exactly the
amount. That's what's in the Report for tonight. What I would say
references back to some of what Larry Klein said. This has been a 20-year
project. It was a long time ago when the City bought this project and began
to plan for the development. I looked at this tonight. This was purchased in
April 2000. The plan has been in the works for a very long time. A number
of things apparently have gotten in the way. I don't know what they all are.
There's no question that at this time we need to go ahead with an alternate
plan as well as the current plan. This amount that I just mentioned must be
raised by November 2018 or the Staff should return to Council to discuss
releasing an RFP. At this point right now, the Mayor is going to create a Fundraising Auxiliary Committee of three City Council Members. They'll
meet with the Board of Directors of the Museum on a regular basis. I think I
heard a second. Did I?
Mayor Scharff: Did you second it, Council Member Kou?
Council Member Kou: I did.
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MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to:
A. Approve an extension of the Option to Lease the Roth Building
between the City of Palo Alto and the Palo Alto History Museum until
November 30, 2018; and
B. Direct Staff to simultaneously develop options for a Request for
Proposal (RFP) for leasing the building to another organization and
return to Council; and
C. At least 50 percent of the funds needed for Phase 1 (as indicated in
the Budget Table: Phase 1 on Packet Page 249) must be raised by
November 2018 or Staff shall return to Council to discuss releasing an
RFP; and
D. The Mayor will create a fundraising auxiliary committee of three City
Council Members. They will meet with the Board of Directors of the
Museum on a regular basis.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Let me say a little more about this. The concern that we
have—let me do one of those questions I like to ask. How many of you have
been inside the building recently? Would you agree that it's not in great
shape? It really needs to be shored up at this point. We need two things.
We need that commitment that attention will be paid to the building to shore
it up and so forth. Also what we need to know is that the Board is willing to
go to the mat on this $1.75 million, as least as I see it in the Packet. To do
that is going to take extraordinary concentration or some kind of godparent
who will fly in with $1.75 million. It has been difficult to raise money for the
Museum. None of us really know why. It may be because it's difficult to see
what this wonderful place would look like when it's finished. We're puzzled
by it. For me, the best way is to put out the carrot and the stick. The carrot
is, if you make that goal, we can continue to work along with you. The other
side of that is to develop an RFP so that some other organization who also
wants to be involved with either history or whatever it might be would have
an opportunity to come in and to develop the Museum as we'd all like to see
it. Those would be my comments at this point. I appreciate you all being
here. Kimberley Wong, I especially enjoyed what you had to say about your
parents who came here at the turn of the last century. All of you here, I know, are absolutely committed to this. It's going to take that kind of
commitment for this to become a reality. Thanks.
Mayor Scharff: Let me let …
James Keene, City Manager: We just want to clarify (crosstalk).
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Vice Mayor Kniss: Do you want to clarify the money?
Mr. Keene: The money piece of it.
Lalo Perez, Chief Financial Officer/Administrative Services Director: Lalo
Perez, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, Vice Mayor Kniss. Our
understanding is for Phase 1 the shortfall is $3.5 million. What I heard you
state is your Motion would be 50 percent of that $3.5 million.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Correct.
Mayor Scharff: I think we should clarify the Motion and put the $1.75
million so there's no confusion.
Mr. Perez: I think that's a good idea.
Vice Mayor Kniss: If we could do that, indicating that's exactly the amount
for Phase 1. That's 50 percent of the funds needed for Phase 1 according to
the Report we have for tonight. Wouldn't you both agree to that?
Mr. Green: Those numbers are correct.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Are you saying yes?
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion Part C, “as indicated in
the Budget Table: Phase 1 on Packet Page 249” with “$1,750,000.”
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou, speak to your second.
Council Member Kou: Vice Mayor Kniss has stated it very wisely. This gives
it some urgency in terms of getting the funds. It's pretty fair with 50
percent by the end of the year. Rooting for this.
Mayor Scharff: I'll speak briefly to it then too. First of all, I want to say
great presentation. All of us really want the History Museum to happen. In
fact, I know I voted to help the History Museum come into play 4, 5, 6
times. We supported the TDRs. I supported the money to fix the wall. I
think I supported the money for the flooding. I think there's been some roof
repairs. I literally feel that from the moment I got on Council I've been told
this is right around the corner. I feel this is really generous, to be honest.
What I heard you stand up and promise us, Mr. Green, is that by the end of
this year you will have raised $3.5 million. That's what I heard you say in
your presentation. I really hope you can raise half of that. If you can't raise
half of that, what we need to do—I think Vice Mayor Kniss is absolutely correct. We need to go out with an RFP and figure out how we can get this
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building rehabilitated. That doesn't mean the idea of a History Museum is
dead. Other people can lease space for a History Museum; other people can
put that together. I don't think we can just leave this building. It's been
there since 2000; that's 17 years. I don't think we can just leave it for
another 10 years. I think everyone would agree on that. It's not good for
the building. It's an historical resource. I don't want to see it—one of the
interesting things that I might want to add to the Motion—we can talk a little
bit about it. This is my concern. I don't know what that RFP looks like, and
Staff is going to need a little bit of guidance as to—there are many ways to
do an RFP. Is it an RFP about how would you use the building? I think it's
really an RFP, in my mind, of how to get the building rehabilitated and
what's the best way to get that done. It may be for a nonprofit. It may be
for a profit. Depending on the terms of the lease, we have to understand
how we actually get this building fixed up because we have limited resources. The City has already agreed—I don't have it in front of me. I
guess it's—the City's already agreed to put in basically $4.3 million. That's
about right, $4.3 million, which is a lot of money frankly. I was looking to
Staff because it says an RFP as to—if the money is raised, that's not an
issue. If we're hearing in June—I guess I want to get a sense of when
you're going to start needing to put that together if you're supposed to come
with us to release an RFP. How long do you need to work on it? Is it 6
months, is it 3 months?
Mr. Perez: It would be a multi-month endeavor. We would need to work on
finding the limitations we would have within the use of the facility. We
would specifically call that out because people then would be able to
respond. Over the years, the only inquiry we've had was from a realtor that
wanted to see if the—if the Palo Alto History Museum was not able to go
forward, if the City would be interested in having a developer come in and
put in a restaurant. That's the only inquiry we've had. There's a conditional
use that we would have to study and make sure we're clear on and prepare
the package and put it on the street.
Mayor Scharff: What I would suggest—I'll get to you in a second—is
something along the lines of Staff to stay in contact with the Museum and follow the fundraising efforts and come to Council—if Staff believes it's
necessary, to come to Council earlier than November to get parameters for
an RFP. Something along those lines. I am looking for you guys to tell me
what you want. Mr. City Manager.
Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, the comment I want to make was along those lines. I don't think this is a straight "go and develop an RFP." I think there is
policy guidance we'll have to get from the Council in advance of then
subsequently developing the RFP. The real question is, is it your goal to be
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essentially ready to hit the street with an RFP around November 2018, in
which case we definitely have to come to you beforehand, or do you want to
do this completely sequentially. It's a different situation there. It does
seem to me that, if your idea is to give some momentum, incentive to them,
they've got to have enough time. It may be at the 9-month mark, 3 months
before November at a minimum, we've got to start looking at (crosstalk).
Mayor Scharff: Why don't we just have a check-in with Council at the 9-
month mark, and then we can make those decisions. We'll have a check-in
at the 6-month mark. I would agree with that. I will put "E" that Staff have
a check-in with Council at the 6-month mark. Is that acceptable to the
maker and the seconder?
Vice Mayor Kniss: Right.
Council Member Kou: Can I ask if Number D, there are three Council
Members that are already part of this whole thing, won't the Council Members be checking in with us?
Mayor Scharff: They will.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I had just said that to Greg. This is the Staff part of it,
and we're going to be hopefully having this Auxiliary Committee of three
that will meet much more often with the Board.
Mayor Scharff: You could basically have that Auxiliary Committee ask Staff
to come back. We could do that, but it's probably a good idea for the entire
Council to have a check-in. It would be nice to say it's going great or it's not
going great or where things are.
Council Member Kou: I'll accept.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to return to
Council at the 6-month mark with an update regarding the Palo Alto History
Museum.” (New Part E)
Mr. Ghaemmaghami: I'd like to interject. Keep in mind that the zoning for
the building is public facility at this point.
Mayor Scharff: The zoning can be changed.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Let me just grab the mic for a minute. Our point is long
term to save the building. That's really our goal. Our concern at this point is a building that's been unused for 18 years really has—there are parts of it
that just are not sturdy any longer and really do need—it needs some TLC at
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this point. What we're saying is we send every good wish to the Committee,
every good wish to the Board to raise the money. I think we're supporting
this pretty much to the maximum we can. Greg has gone through many
times that he has voted for this in the past as a Board but also again giving
authority to the City Manager. Our concern is that the building is sitting
there. We're heading toward 20 years of sitting there. We really need to
see some results for the fundraising.
Mayor Scharff: Let's see. I now have a bunch of lights. Council Member
Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: I guess I'll add my take on what the goal here is.
I really think that we have three priorities, and I'll list them and why this is
the appropriate order for this body to really be thinking about them. One is
saving that building. Second is getting a History Museum that's actually
open. Third is getting a History Museum in that rehabilitated building. I'd really like to see all three of those happen. I'm committed to making those
happen. It's time for some tough love to make sure we really push forward.
I was thinking about how to do that, and this Motion probably heads the
right direction. It's tough. I've a lot of respect for everything that's
happened. I know a ton of work has gone in. Raising that kind of money is
daunting, to say the least, but that's what it's going to take. Early on in this
presentation we saw what I think are the real numbers, which were not in
the Staff Report. This is $20 million ultimately; this is not just a couple
million dollars. I did have some concerns about how the numbers were
tallied up in the Staff Report and in the presentation. I just have some
questions. I want to make sure I'm clear. We have $2.88 million from TDRs
plus $1 million from the Budget Stabilization Reserve (BSR). That equals
$3.88 million. I think it was mentioned earlier that that means—so the
difference is really—so that means—we were also told that the City had
contributed—on Page 2 of the Staff Report, Packet Page 247 says that the
City was contributing $4.3 million. $4.3 million minus the $3.88 million is
$0.42 million. Where did that extra almost $0.5 million come from? That
$0.42 million wasn't really called out.
Mr. Perez: It's interest, and there's about $350,000 in Library impact fees for the historic archiving.
Council Member Wolbach: $350,000?
Mr. Perez: Yeah, about that number.
Council Member Wolbach: What was it for again?
Mr. Perez: The archives.
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Mr. Keene: We're relocating the Library System archives to the Palo Alto
History Museum. That's a policy decision a few years ago. That provided a
little bit of potential funding that we had for the relocation of the archives
when we redid the Rinconada Library.
Council Member Wolbach: $350,000 to move the archives. Seems like an
expensive (crosstalk).
Mr. Keene: Not just to move, but to be able to house the archives at the
Museum.
Mr. Perez: To pay for the rehab of the floor space.
Council Member Wolbach: I'm a little hesitant about spending $0.33 million
of Library impact fees on something that's not strictly Library. Maybe you
can put me at ease on this one.
Mr. Perez: We've cleared it with our legal folks and the impact fee
restrictions. It is allowable. As you know, most of our libraries have been either renovated or brand new, so there's not a lot of other uses for the
Library System right now.
Council Member Wolbach: Maybe not right now, but …
Mr. Keene: No, no. The whole idea here was that we had most of the
archives in the old Main Library downstairs. In the design in the rehab of
the facility, there was a better use for all of that program space than trying
to make a place for this. The whole idea was the Palo Alto History Museum
could be a good location for this archive for folks who would want to go and
do historical research and that sort of thing. It could ultimately be an asset
to the Museum in a way more than keeping it housed in our libraries. That
was the thinking.
Council Member Wolbach: That helps put my mind at ease. I appreciate
that. I'll leave that bone alone. During the presentation, there was a
number of $5.7 million that was mentioned, that has been raised so far.
Can you break that down for me, where that all came from?
Mr. Perez: If you look at Packet Page 4, I'll take a crack at it. It's at least
the $4.3 million on that—I'm looking at the Budget Table: Phase 1. $4.3
million for the City contribution, $1.4 million that the Museum has raised.
Council Member Wolbach: Basically, you're counting the City's contribution as part of your fundraising.
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Mayor Scharff: While you're on it, didn't I hear a $9 million number bandied
about?
Council Member Wolbach: Yeah.
Mr. Keene: Phase 1 is a total of $9.2 million, $4.3 million from the City so
far as a pledge essentially, $1.4 million that the Museum is identifying as
pledges they have from elsewhere. That leaves this gap of $3.5 million that
you have targeted half of. That's the $9.2 million. What is left unspoken—
it's more for transparency purposes or whatever or clarity than it is for what
the pricing is. It sounds like the Motion's intention is to provide a very
specific direction and incentive over the next year for the Museum to actually
be able to use that as part of the argument to go out to the public to say
there's a clock ticking, and we need to get that money. That being said, the
figures we're using, as I understand it right now, are construction cost
estimates that are contemporary. I can't remember; they might even be 3 or 6 months old. We do have the question of what will the construction cost
be a year from now or beyond. We should just put that out there.
Council Member Wolbach: That's what we've seen with all the other projects
we've worked on and others have too. The same thing with the Junior
Museum and Zoo (JMZ), the cost went up, and they had to scale back their
plans and scratch Phase 2 for now at least. I'll just say I will support the
Motion. I do look forward to Council Members being assigned by the Mayor
to work with the Board to help them figure out how to close that gap, Staff
checking back in with Council. In part, this is why the—we really want them
to check in with the full Council in part to talk about what an alternative
might be. If the History Museum's not ready to go, maybe for a while we
lease out it to somebody else, and they do the fix up, and we give them the
discount on their lease for a while. Then, we get a fixed up building and,
when their lease expires, the History Museum can move in. There are a lot
of different ways we could go. I'm just brainstorming here. That's why we
do need to move on these two tracks. We need to start exploring what
other options would be. Certainly, my preference is the History Museum is
the first tenant that moves in there, and then we can make that happen.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: The Motion's going in the right direction. The idea
is to give you time to raise some funds. In your presentation, I heard you
raised $9 million, and that included—could you maybe come to the podium,
if that's all right, and explain how much money you've raised?
Mr. Green: I can see where this is a bit confusing. Over the years, we've raised over $9 million. We've also spent money to keep ourselves alive.
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$700,000 of that was architectural fees. Some of it goes to City permitting
fees. We've also had staff over the years. We have spent over $1 million
already. That's gone. That's not money that we can use toward the
rehabilitation of the Roth Building. What that money did go to is in
preparation of that rehabilitation project. It's the Vance Brown contract. It's
the architectural plans, and so on. That money has already been spent.
Council Member DuBois: You've raised money for operations as well?
Mr. Green: Yes.
Council Member DuBois: Can you say how much you've raised? Do you
know how much of this …
Mr. Green: Do you mean post-occupancy operations?
Council Member DuBois: Yeah.
Mr. Green: Over $2 million.
Council Member DuBois: You already have $2 million …
Mr. Green: In the bank.
Council Member DuBois: … earmarked to …
Mr. Green: It's a pledge.
Council Member DuBois: Do you have phases planned like at what point do
you begin building? Would you open operations in a phased way or do you
need to raise the entire $10 million operation funds before you would start?
Mr. Green: We can start long before we've reached the $20 million goal.
We will continue fundraising when the doors are open to this Museum. We
are looking at plans to get galleries and exhibits open. They may not be the
galleries and exhibits of our dreams and programs, but it will be a functional
museum that the community can start to appreciate. The community will
have access to it. The community will have access to the archives on the
second floor. We have a—I don't know if contingency is the right word. We
have a plan to have a doors open Museum before we have finished the
complete funding for all of the exhibits, the virtual reality and all that stuff.
Council Member DuBois: Council Member Wolbach mentioned the Junior
Museum had a second phase that they had to cut back. You guys could cut
back.
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Mr. Green: Absolutely.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you. A question about the TDRs that were
already sold. Those were sold based on the History Museum's plans. We're
saying that's a City contribution. Who controls those TDRs and what can
they be used for?
Mr. Perez: They are already sold. The funds you control.
Council Member DuBois: They were sold based on the plans to use it as a …
Mr. Perez: The intent was to use it for the rehab of the Roth Building.
Council Member DuBois: If there were new plans for the building, those
TDRs still apply or do they have to be applied?
Mr. Perez: They can still work depending on Council direction.
Council Member DuBois: It doesn't have to be a public facility or a
museum?
Mr. Ghaemmaghami: As long as it's a historical—they were sold to be used for the Roth Building. Basically, the City got the funds, and the purchaser
got the right to the TDRs. The funds will be used for the Roth Building.
Council Member DuBois: These specific TDRs are historical rehabilitation
TDRs.
Mr. Ghaemmaghami: That's correct.
Mr. Keene: Presuming we would insist on a proportionate historic
renovation of the Roth Building regardless of who is in there. We will look at
your question as to whether or not, if a not-for-profit or public-serving
entity, it's still applicable.
Council Member DuBois: One of the public speakers mentioned historical
rehabilitation TDR funds left over from College Terrace. What can that
money be used for?
Mr. Perez: There was prior Council authority to sell 2,500 square feet of
TDRs for that. Future Councils were not interested in the Staff moving
forward, so we have not sold those. We have the TDRs available that could
be sold. That's one pot.
Council Member DuBois: It's not like there's money from TDRs already sold.
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Mr. Perez: That was the second part. You may recall the Sea Scout TDRs.
There was about $660,000 left on that, and that is cash on hand to use for
other historical facilities.
Council Member DuBois: But it has to be an historical building?
Mr. Perez: Correct.
Council Member DuBois: I'm curious. How long did the Sea Scout Building
take from beginning to end? Somebody mentioned the Art Museum and the
Junior Museum.
Mr. Perez: It took a while. I would have to go back and look. I know it
took some time; there were some challenges on that one too.
Council Member DuBois: I know we were talking about 17 years, but the
Staff Report says we started talking to the Museum in like 2007. Is that
more like 10 years?
Mr. Ghaemmaghami: We entered into the option agreement with Palo Alto Historical Museum in 2007. The RFP was issued before that. We purchased
the building in 2000.
Council Member DuBois: There was a period of time before we knew what
we were going to do with the building or between …
Mr. Ghaemmaghami: That's correct.
Council Member DuBois: It's still a long time, but not 17 years. With the
City's contribution, in terms of money we actually used we used $1 million to
shore up the wall. The City hasn't incurred—the $4.3 million is not really
money the City's incurred. That's TDR sales. When you say interest, is that
interest earned?
Mr. Perez: Yes. The Council directed us to pull money from the Budget
Stabilization Reserve, $1 million. That's what we did and set it aside.
Council Member DuBois: Our hard costs—I guess we haven't really spent
anything at this point.
Mr. Perez: Correct. We're holding the money until they convert the option
to a lease itself. Once they raise the funds and we get satisfactory
documentation on that, we can convert it to the lease. Then, we would
release the funds.
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Council Member DuBois: That's all helpful to understand. It was pretty
interesting to see the plans and the presentation. Happy to hear Vance
Brown is onboard. It sounds like you have a contract with them. I hadn't
appreciated before the idea of the public bathroom. If I remember the Sea
Scout Building, that was a couple hundred thousand dollars or something to
the City. That café in the park also seems like a nice benefit. I hope we can
pull this off. I'd like to propose a couple of friendly amendments if the
makers are listening. Larry Klein made some good points about a
reasonable amount of time to raise money. I would propose that we change
Item A to be 2019 instead of 2018 to give them 2 years to raise the $1.75
million.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Tom, I thought about that carefully. It depends on how
we look at money. $1.75 million seems like a reasonable amount to get to.
That's half of what is needed to get to the next point. While 2 years is certainly tempting, maybe next year it will be—if that doesn't happen, it'll go
forward another year. For now, I'm much more comfortable leaving it with a
year.
Council Member DuBois: The idea of a goal is really good. I'm just not sure
if 12 months is realistic. I'd make that an unfriendly Amendment if you're
not going to support it.
AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council
Member Holman to replace in the Motion Part A, “2018” with “2019.”
Mayor Scharff: Do you want to speak to your Amendment?
Council Member DuBois: Yeah. I have a second Amendment after this. The
idea is really good. Let's have an incentive and put a timeline on it. It's a
little bit arbitrary to say 12 months for $1.75 million. Really it's been about
10 years. Some of these projects have taken a long time. I do think they
develop momentum as you raise more money. That's just my thinking
behind that.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, you want to speak to your second
as to the Amendment?
Council Member Holman: Yes. I agree with the thinking that Council
Member DuBois has put to this. It further would help clarify "C" because "C" and "A" seem to be operating separately here. Adding the 2 years to "A"
would help rectify that to some extent.
Mayor Scharff: I'll speak against the Amendment. Mr. Green stood up there
and told us he's going to raise $3.5 million this year. He's asked for a 1-
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year extension. We've come back and said, "You might be being a tad
optimistic. You're forgiven for it. You're very enthusiastic. Show us you can
raise half of that." I think that's more than fair. I actually have faith that
Mr. Green will go ahead and raise that money. To say 2 years—I realize,
Tom—I totally get it. We all want the History Museum to happen, but
literally I have sat in meeting after meeting where this was supposed to
move forward. I just haven't seen the progress. What I've heard is we're
going to tie this to the 2019—I can't say it. If we're going to tie it to that
and that's the driving force and that's why this is going to work this time, 1
year and 2018 is the way to go. If you go past that, then you're past—I
can't even say it. We all know what I mean. I'm going to vote no. Does
anyone else want to speak to the Amendment? Seeing no one, let's vote on
the board on the Amendment. That fails on a 6-3 vote with Council
Members DuBois, Kou, and Fine voting—5-3 correct.
AMENDMENT FAILED: 3-5 DuBois, Holman, Kou yes, Fine absent
Council Member DuBois: My second Amendment would be a letter, "F." It
would be that the City would use the money from the Sea Scout TDRs for
historical preservation as a challenge grant, matching donations for the next
year. Does that make sense?
AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to add to the Motion, “the City would use the Sea Scout
Transferable Development Rights TDRs proceeds ($665,000) for historical
restoration as a challenge grant for the next year.”
Vice Mayor Kniss: How much is the Sea Scout TDR?
Mr. Perez: $665,000.
Vice Mayor Kniss: $165,000.
Mr. Perez: $695,000.
Mr. Keene: $695,000. Is that in addition to the $1.7 million?
Mr. Ghaemmaghami: It's $665,945, about $665,000. That's what it is.
Council Member DuBois: The idea is that this is money that can only be
used for historical preservation. We would just put it up as a challenge.
(Crosstalk.)
Vice Mayor Kniss: It sounds good. Let me push back a little more. The money is where now? In our account somewhere?
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Mr. Perez: Yes.
Vice Mayor Kniss: This is what's left over from their selling their TDRs that
we spoke of earlier? The same kind of TDRs?
Mr. Perez: Correct.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Tom, if you'd like to use them that way, I would agree
with that. Tell me again how you want to use that. In other words, we'll put
up …
Council Member DuBois: They have to get matching donations.
Vice Mayor Kniss: We'll put out a letter that says …
Mayor Scharff: It doesn't go to the $1.75 million. They have to raise $1.75
million, but they may match it.
Council Member DuBois: I'm okay with that.
Vice Mayor Kniss: That's actually a very generous and interesting offer.
This gives the Board and Staff an opportunity to work in two directions, one toward the $1.75 million but also to get about two-thirds of $1 million put
out there as a challenge grant.
Council Member DuBois: Do you accept that, Lydia?
Council Member Kou: I do accept it. It's a very good idea and will help out
getting them there sooner.
AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION
WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the
Motion, “authorize the use of the Sea Scout Building Transferable
Development Rights (TDRs) proceeds ($665,000) for historical restoration as
a challenge grant for the next year, this amount would not count towards
the $1,750,000 included in Part C.” (New Part F)
Mr. Keene: It's also another signal of the City's support and an incentive to
the program.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, you had your light on.
Council Member Holman: To the Amendment, it needs a little bit of
clarification if I understood what the intention was. Instead of it stating on
the second line "this amount would not count"—as I read it, it's not clear
whether it's the $665,000 and the matching amount wouldn't count towards
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the $1.75 million. The intention is that the $665,000 would not count
toward the …
Mayor Scharff: That's correct.
Council Member Holman: Can we change the Amendment to say "this
$665,000 would not count toward the $1.75 million"?
Vice Mayor Kniss: The $665,000 is separate, but the match will be applied.
Council Member Holman: That's what I'm trying to get clarified here.
Mr. Keene: The match will be applied to the $1.75 million. If you met the
challenge grant, then it's going to be a little over $1 million additional.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion Part F, “this amount” with
“this $665,000 amount.”
Vice Mayor Kniss: I think we're doing our very best to make this work for
the Board and to make it work for the Staff. At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, there are carrots and sticks in this. We hope that you will
find the carrot. Our whole goal is to make this happen. This is 2 blocks
down the street. We'd love to see a History Museum.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: I just had a quick question. How much does it cost
the City to maintain the building every year? It must cost a little bit to fix
the roof and stuff like that.
Mr. Perez: Off the top of our head, we were trying to think about that. It
was about $30,000. That's what we believe it is. It's external landscaping.
Council Member Filseth: It's really nominal. Is there—depreciation is the
wrong word. The longer it goes on, it's going to—there's more stuff to fix
and so forth. Do we have a sense of what that is?
Mr. Perez: We have not done a review at that level.
Council Member Filseth: There aren't huge out-of-pocket costs towards
having it sit empty?
Mr. Perez: It's been minimal here and there.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks.
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Vice Mayor Kniss: To that, the building is not habitable as it currently sits.
Mr. Ghaemmaghami: No, it's not.
Mr. Perez: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Scharff: Yes.
Mr. Perez: Under "F," the City would use the Sea Scott TDR proceeds?
Mayor Scharff: "Proceeds," good. Put that in. I see the light. Council
Member Kou.
Council Member Kou: I have a question. I'm re-reading this. Number B,
direct Staff to simultaneously develop options for RFP. I was wondering
number one, if that is legal. Number two, if that might impede their
progress in fundraising.
Mr. Keene: I thought we made it clear that the timing on when that work
would begin would really follow both feedback from the subcommittee of the
Council, advise them on fundraising, and then our 6-month check-in. I could definitely say we wouldn't be doing anything before the 6-month check-in.
Then, we would be coming back to the Council to see where we are and get
further direction on whether we would actually proceed with that.
Simultaneously wouldn't …
Council Member Kou: That's the wording that I was re-reading and got
concerned. If that's what the plan is, to come back, then that's fine.
Mayor Scharff: Just briefly I had a question. You guys said something that
piqued my interest. You said there was 2,500 square feet of TDRs that
could be sold from one of the libraries to be used for rehabilitation. One of
the things I would support—I don't think we need to go into it now and I
don't want it to be controversial—if you raise the $1.75 million, then you're
still going to have another $1.75 million to raise, at which point I would be
fine with selling those TDRs as a challenge grant just like we did with the
Sea Scout stuff, which would raise at least another $1.5 million as a
challenge grant which would cover the other $1.75 million you need to raise,
which would get you there if you doubled that raise. I wanted to throw that
out there and let you know, if you can raise some of this money, you can get
there.
Vice Mayor Kniss: We're sounding like a fundraising committee up here. Council Member Holman, did you put your light on again?
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Council Member Holman: Yes, please. Did you want to add that last point
to the Motion?
Mayor Scharff: If you would support it, I'll support it. Let's wait until June,
with the June check-in. Let's see how they're doing. I don't mind adding it
now. I just didn't want there to be—do you want to do it now?
Vice Mayor Kniss: Let' see how it all comes (inaudible).
Mayor Scharff: Do you agree to wait? You think we should wait? I'm fine to
wait until June.
Vice Mayor Kniss: We know it's out there.
Mayor Scharff: You won't forget.
Council Member Holman: We won't forget. These meetings are recorded.
The only reason I said do it tonight is because time passes. We forget what
we say. We'll have a record of it anyway. To your point about the 6
months, I was actually thinking that the 6-month mark ought to be a 9-month mark. It's much more feasible.
Mayor Scharff: I'm not saying they have to—I think we should come back.
We can always put it off. Let's come back in June and see what progress
they've made.
Council Member Holman: Can someone explain to me what "D" intends?
There are two of us on this dais that are actually Advisory Board Members,
Vice Mayor Kniss and I. What is the intention of "D"? What will the three
City Council Members do? Help with fundraising or just be …
Mayor Scharff: I think they'll help with fundraising and give advice. They'll
literally help with fundraising and give advice.
Council Member Holman: That's good. It's really important to clarify
something. It's really important, really important, to understand that the
TDR monies are not City money. They are private monies that have been
the result of the sale of the TDRs. It's not City money. It is not City money.
It is money that is sitting in our coffers, but the money came from property
owners who bought the TDRs. I think that's a really, really important
distinction. I'm hoping the Weekly will catch that. It is further than that.
The TDRs are the result of the efforts of the Museum and the investment of
time and money from the Museum or the Sea Scout entity because that's how you get them, that's how you earn them. You have to develop plans
that satisfy, in the Roth Building's case, both the seismic and the
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rehabilitation criteria in order to earn them. That takes time and investment
of—I think Rich Green said $700,000. It's not that it was without the
Museum's efforts and financial investment both. I understand what the
intention is about "B," which is to simultaneously develop options for an RFP.
I do wonder—I think Council Member Kou asked this—if that might interfere
with the fundraising capabilities of the Museum. It seems to indicate a lack
of commitment on the City's part to the Museum. I worry about that. I'm
not the fundraising expert, but I worry about that being mixed signals.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Council Member Holman, the whole goal of this, as I said,
was carrots and sticks. If there's no urgency in this, looking back at the
fundraising efforts over the last 10 years, for them to use as well. For Rich
and Laura to go out and say, "We're under the gun. We have to raise this
amount of money. It has to be delivered by a certain date." That's how
you'll make a difference. I don't know how else we can literally put a fire under this group to raise the money that we want them to raise. We're
saying how else can we make it easier for you. We've talked about the Sea
Scout proceeds. We're talking now about TDRs that might come to fruition
in June. We are really working hard to make this work.
Council Member Holman: I appreciate it. A lot has been said that really is in
support of the Museum. I really appreciate that. Everybody here who spoke
talked about what a good project it is. Like I say, do we have the lease
option stick, if you will. I'm a little concerned about "B" being a mixed signal
that the community is going to read. I'm not the fundraising expert. I see
Rich is nodding his head. Through the Mayor, could I ask Museum folks to
comment on …
Mayor Scharff: You may.
Mr. Green: Thank you. This would be a confusing message to the donor
community. We are in this together. We are both trying to raise money to
rehabilitate a City-owned building so that it can be occupied. This is not
money to build a museum that we're talking about. $9.2 million has nothing
to do with our Museum. It has everything to do with making that building
occupiable. We have invested donor money in the architectural plans and
the staff, the permitting, and a lot of hard work to get to this point. We're helping you. We're trying to get this building rehabilitated so that it can be
occupied by anybody. The intent is for it to be occupied by a History
Museum. We are very far down that path. Please be clear that the money
we're talking about here doesn't build a museum. It makes that building
occupiable.
Mayor Scharff: We understand that.
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Page 97 of 98 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/11/17
Mr. Green: If the donor community feels that the City Council may not keep
their commitment to this building for its use as a History Museum, this will
cause us some concern.
Mayor Scharff: I think that's clearly not the intent. What we're being really
clear to the donor community here is we want this to go forward as a History
Museum. We want this to go forward and be rehabilitated. If you don't
raise the $1.75 million by November 30th, we are going out and looking for
other uses or other ways to get the building rehabilitated. I think it's really
very clear.
Ms. Bajuk: I could ask the question a different way. If the clock starts
ticking in November 2018, that makes sense. I have no problem with that.
If the clock starts ticking in terms of the Request for Proposal going out
before that, we've talked about 6 months and 9 months. It doesn't go out
before that? It waits until November.
Mayor Scharff: It does not go out before November.
Ms. Bajuk: It's not like you're shopping for a new wife while you're going
through marital counseling. Thank you for the clarification.
Council Member Holman: Does that mean that you're less concerned about
it than …
Ms. Bajuk: I think we can make this work. If the clock doesn't start ticking
until November '18 upon proving that we have met certain goals, that makes
sense to me, the 1 year.
Council Member Holman: You don't have the same concerns I did.
Ms. Bajuk: I appreciate all your concerns and the help you're offering,
though. Thank you. You've all put a lot of thought into this.
Council Member Holman: Thank you. With that, I will be able to support
the Motion. Appreciate all the efforts and concerns. Thanks.
MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by
Council Member Kou to:
A. Approve an extension of the Option to Lease the Roth Building
between the City of Palo Alto and the Palo Alto History Museum until
November 30, 2018; and
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Page 98 of 98 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/11/17
B. Direct Staff to simultaneously develop options for a Request for
Proposal (RFP) for leasing the building to another organization and
return to Council; and
C. At least 50 percent of the funds needed for Phase 1 ($1,750,000) must
be raised by November 2018, or Staff shall return to Council to discuss
releasing an RFP; and
D. The Mayor will create a fundraising auxiliary committee of three City
Council Members. They will meet with the Board of Directors of the
Museum on a regular basis; and
E. Direct Staff to return to Council at the 6-month mark with an update
regarding the Palo Alto History Museum; and
F. Authorize the use of the Sea Scout Building Transferable Development
Rights (TDRs) proceeds ($665,000) for historical restoration as a
challenge grant for the next year, this $665,000 amount would not count towards the $1,750,000 included in Part C.
Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the board. That passes unanimously with
Council Member Fine absent. Thank you very much for your efforts and for
coming today.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent
Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs
None.
Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements
Mayor Scharff: I think we are now at Council Member Questions,
Comments. Just want to check. Council Member Questions, Comments. I
see no lights, so the meeting's adjourned.
Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:35 P.M.